By Tunde Akanni
“Like play…”, as they say, Dangote emerges the Man of the Year 2025! A consumerist perspective, you may say.
But who could have imagined that the 2024 Gen Zs’ “no gree for anybody” slogan would get a lease of life from the least likely quarter? Dangote volunteered. He tore through the muscles of powerful oil sectors’ big men. Only one was in sight but big ones fell! And even a third. Dangote no gree for anybody. He has come to reaffirm his conquest of the sector. May the conquest signal better future for citizens.
Yeah, unlike POTUS Trump, Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, ran an unusual race and breasted the tape. By all means, Trump, strangely, sought the Nobel Peace Prize this year, 2025 but it all ended in praise. For the judges, as you know, who reaffirmed their consistency by giving it to the deserving, a Venezuelan, Maria Corina Machado. May Venezuela survive the raging oil-induced envy.
Aliko Dangote, serial winner on all choice business fronts, renowned for his relentlessly expansionist business drive was about being stopped from clinching my nomination by some feeble appointee like that, Farouk Ahmed. Comparatively feeble, yes. Engineer Ahmed, long sworn against the welfare of the multitude was up to some vicious machination he planned to inflict on Nigerians again, this Yuletide season. But God had a better plan for Nigerians. Far, from Ahmed’s. Indeed, superior. Until recently, he was the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA.
To the extreme delight of many Nigerians, Dangote announced a slashed price for fuel by as much as almost #200. Ahmed and company wanted a different, constraining deal for Nigerians and even started cooking some sentiments. There was no stopping daring Dangote. He had tolerated Ahmed and company enough.
In the heat of the moment, Dangote alerted Nigerians to the fact that Engineer Ahmed as the head of NMDPRA preferred the regime of continued imporation of fuel which impliedly would mean prolonged era of high price of fuel at possibly #1000 per litre very soon. Meanwhile, Dangote is here with the offer of #739 pump-head price deriving from #699 gantry price from which #300 accrues to the government on every litre.
Without mincing words, Dangote said the otherwise unprintable, alleging Engineer Ahmed’s overindulgence in messy corruption but Dangote would not play ball to sustain and would rather spill all beans. After what looked like the initial threats by Dangote, and Ahmed did not seem to be ruffled, Dangote got his lawyer, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, to file a formal complaint against the stubborn perpetrator of the anti-people officialdom. It finally became public knowledge that this character had been living beyond his means at the expense of what he could hardly defend. The onus is now on the Independent Corrupt Practice Commission, ICPC, to do all verification for the world to know the villain further
Few months back, Ahmed and company had played a fast one on the entire nation claiming the Port Harcourt refinery long abandoned and declared a ne’er do well by the legendary Obasanjo, was back in good shape. Nah!
They conjured it all and made it look real, televising all the falsehoods for the world to lap up. Only for them to recoil after giving so much life to sheer deceit. But who knows how much would have been gulped by the show of shame mounted by Engineer Ahmed and fellow swindlers of taxpayers’ sweats?
Even now that Ahmed has been compelled to hand in his resignation letter, his taciturnity has continued. But a certain Engineer Kailani that Dangote never mentioned plunged into the dark alley of Ahmed’s fight. According to him, on Trust TV, he knew how Dangote made his money from Port Harcourt but that some of them just chose to keep quiet.
Really? Again, Dangote no gree for anybody! He slammed an ultimatum of seven days on the self appointed advocate of Ahmed to do full throttle disclosure of all he knew about how Dangote made his money in Port Harcourt failing which he ran the risk of a #100 billion suit. But guy was a mere mouth-maker. He hurried back to Trust TV to swallow his words. He went on to apologise and in his characteristic sweeping sobbing muttered that his north had ways with Allah knows what.
The good thing for now however is that Dangote has crashed the pump-head price of fuel from over #900 or so to #739 in Lagos, at least at MRS stations.This writer bought from Palmgrove station Monday December 22, 2025. The price crasher went further to enjoin members of the public to report stations declining to dispense at the stated price.
This Dangote’s new found love for activism came on the heel of the recent inspiring action of an activist, or better still, a renewed hope compliant government commission, in Lagos. The said commission, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC, defying possible blackmail, in the spirit of no gree for anybody descended on the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company, IKEDC, on account of protracted infractions including deprivation of certain subscribers of services for as long as one year and some months. After serial warnings which IKEDC deliberately ignored, it took a powerful team of FCCPC led by its Surveillance team to seal up the premises of the erring Ikeja zonal office of IKEDC.
IKEDC has the notoriety of being insensitive to customers’ complaints but interestingly has always been stopped by FCCPC whose slogan of Demand and Insist is echoed by “no gree for anybody”. Early this year, your’s sincerely had the existing electricity meter for my apartment within government quarters in Ikeja GRA disconnected by operatives of IKEDC, even when they were not ready to replace immediately.
The simplistic argument from IKEDC operatives was that it was an old meter even as it was also a prepaid meter which FCCPC had argued was upgradeable by merely installing some software on that particular version. The Federal Government’s directive was that if they chose to remove any such meter, they must replace for subscribers in Band A at no cost. But IKEDC had always stated that free meter would take eternity and therefore advising subscribers to pay for meters so they could have a replacement.
Almost everyone in my vicinity had been successfully cajoled and made to pay for their meters, but heeding the slogan of FCCPC, I demanded for my entitlement and insisted too by notifying FCCPC. Promptly, FCCPC intervened and advised IKEDC to ensure they supply my meter without delay. FCCPC added further that in the event that it would take a while to get me a meter, they must not slap any outrageous bill on me, insisting specifically, that subsequent bills for me must be relative to my billing history. My meter was installed within one month! Within the said month, my bill was based on the average cost of my consumption over time. Just imagine life without FCCPC
Today’s Nigeria with prevalent multidimensional reforms, at the centre, clearly inspires citizens’ activist posturing as demonstrated by Dangote, no matter what the trajectory of the “no gree for anybody” campaign is.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is even in the forefront of all these, afterall. He leaves no one in doubt about his deep conviction for the good governance need for the fiscal autonomy of local governments in line with the verdict of the Supreme Court. The height of it all was his recent public declaration of the likelihood of executing the statutory provision for the executive order to compel compliance for State Governments. This was actually in addition to repeated calls earlier by the President to citizens to call out the governors and other relevant elected officials to work with the substantially increased revenue.
Follow who know road like Dangote. Demand for your rights and Insist, shikena.
Professor Tunde Akanni, Pioneer Fellow of the Responsible Governance Prrogramme of the Michigan State University and LASU based Development Communications Expert, is currently on sabbatical tenure at the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC.