Dangote at 60: Top celebrities celebrate the business icon

Top celebrities in Nigeria showed their love and admiration for the business icon Aliko Dangote as he marked his 60th birthday in style.

They started by posting messages on social media before joining other businessmen, socialist and politicians at the exclusive party
to celebrate the entrepreneur.

Celebrities in attendance includes Davido, Peter  and Lola Okoye, Jude Okoye, Mo Abudu, Ifeoma Williams, Ruth Osime, Femi Otedola, DJ Jimmy Jatt, King Sunny Ade and many more

Aliko Dangote was born in a very prominent business family that lived in Nigeria for many years. He is the great grandson of Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, the richest man in African until the time of his death in 1955. Aliko Dangote, an ethnic Hausa Muslim from Kano State, was born on 10 April 1957 into a wealthy Muslim family.

Dangote said, "I can remember when I was in primary school, I would go and buy cartons of sweets [sugar boxes] and I would start selling them just to make money. I was so interested in business, even at that time."

Dangote Group was established as a small trading firm in 1977, that was the same year Dangote moved to Lagos to expand the company. Now, Dangote Group is a multi-trillion naira conglomerate with many of its operations in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo.

He has expanded to cover food processing, cement manufacturing, and freight. The Dangote Group also dominates the sugar market in Nigeria and is a main supplier to the country's soft drink companies, breweries, and confectioners.

Dangote Group has progressed from being a trading company to being the largest industrial group in Nigeria including Dangote Sugar Refinery, Dangote Cement, and Dangote Flour.

Dangote met the Nigerian Ports Authorities, in July 2012, to lease an abandoned piece of land at the Apapa Port, which was permitted. He later built facilities for his flour company there. In the 1990s, Dangote also approached the Central Bank of Nigeria with the idea that it would be cheaper for the bank to allow his transport company to manage their fleet of staff buses, a proposal which was also agreed.

Dangote Group, today in Nigeria, with its supremacy in the sugar market and refinery business is still the leading supplier (70% of the market) to the country's soft drinks companies, breweries and confectioners. It is the largest refinery in Africa and the third largest in the world, producing 800,000 tonnes of sugar annually. Dangote Group owns salt factories and flour mills and is a major importer of rice, fish, pasta, cement and fertiliser. Dangote Group exports cotton, cashew nuts, cocoa, sesame seed and ginger to several countries. It also has major investments in real estate, banking, transport, textiles and oil and gas. The company employs over 11,000 people and is the largest industrial conglomerate in West Africa.

He has expanded into telecommunications and has started building 14,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables to supply the whole of Nigeria. As a result, Dangote was honoured in January 2009 as the leading provider of employment in the Nigerian construction industry.

Dangote said, "Let me tell you this and I want to really emphasize it...nothing is going to help Nigeria like Nigerians bringing back their money. If you give me $5 billion today, I will invest everything here in Nigeria. Let us put our heads together and work."

Dangote has won several awards and have had numerous recognitions and honorary titles. He was named as the Forbes Africa Person of the Year 2014. The other nominees for the award were South Africa's Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, (SEC), Arunma Oteh, and President of the African Development Bank, Donald Kaberuka.

Dangote and six other prominent Nigerians, in 2013 were conferred Honorary Citizenship of Arkansas State by Governor Mike Beebe who also proclaimed May 30 of every year as Nigeria Day in the US. The other prominent Nigerians are: Chief Ms. Temitope Ajayi, the President and CEO of Nigerian-American Agricultural Empowerment Programme; Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State; Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development; Prof. Tajudeen Gbadamosi, a former lecturer of University of Lagos; Prof. Ade Adefuye, the Nigeria's Ambassador to the United States; Prof. Julius Okojie, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission.