Aliko Dangote has revealed that he once withdrew $10 million just to prove to himself that he was rich.
Mr. Dangote, who is the richest black man on the planet today, revealed this on Saturday, April 6, 2019 at the Mo Ibrahim governance weekend in Abidjan, while he was chatting with the convener, Mo Ibrahim.
“The way it is that when you first start a business, your target is to make your first million. Fine, I did that,” the tycoon said.
“After a year or so, I realised that I had much more, and I said ok, fine, all these numbers are just written numbers.
“One day I went to a bank, and at that time, there were no restrictions, and I wrote a cheque and cashed $10 million from the bank and put it in the boot of my vehicle, and I went home and I opened it and I looked at $10 million and I said ‘now I believe I have money’.”
Mr. Dangote, last week, made a bold statement condemning the high rate of poverty in Northern Nigeria and attributing it to poor leadership.
He has called on governors in Northern Nigeria to do more in mobilizing local private sector investors in their states.
Dangote made the call at the Kaduna Economic and investment summit on Wednesday, where he stated that such a move can spur huge inflow of private capital, reduce insecurity, unemployment, and poverty.
“Northern Nigeria will continue to fall behind if the respective state government does not move to close the development gap. Closing these gaps requires huge multi-year investment and the government will not be able to raise the capital required to fund this. Only the private sector can raise the capital required to fund the level of investment this country needs.
“Efforts should be more in terms of attracting local investors, there is no foreigner that will come and invest without seeing the local investors invest. So local investors are key to attracting foreign investments and we must pay attention to that.”
