The world of politics is like a perilous gulf bordered by storms. Several men sail into the turbulence, like desperate pirates, seeking floating and buried treasures. Very few, however, emerge with burnished pearls from the ocean floor.
In the expansive universe of Nigerian politics, the latter navigate the coast like sea-hardened sailors; armed with fetching meekness and staunch resolve, they persevere, holding course until they chance on floating and buried treasures.
Oftentimes their fortitude yields handsome results as observable in the affairs of Nigeria’s most illustrious magnates and power brokers.
In their privileged, cutthroat world, politics is deployed as a tool for peer coddling and clannish enrichment, especially amid high power circuits.
Natives and beneficiaries of this political paradise are mostly born to privilege. Sometimes, they aren’t. But one unifying factor of their circuit is that their lives are governed by a sense of loyalty to clique and entitlement to the spoils of Nigeria’s economic and political enterprise.
Much of their success stories are replete with challenges and hard compromises.
Nasiru Danu
Then there is Nasiru Danu, who has also been described as one of those privileged young men whose association with President Buhari helped blur the line between obscurity and prosperity.
With scant information about his professional background, Nasiru, reportedly a founding member of the APC, had his association with the president consummated with his appointment as the number two man in the Muhammadu Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation in 2014.
Those who know the polo-loving Nasiru pre-2015 can only recall that he was always seen around top polo players and sometimes with the former Inspector General of Police, Muhammed Abubakar. At the time, very few people knew the name of his company, if there was any, or the business he was into. But the moment Buhari emerged Nigeria’s president, Nasiru became a billionaire with his Casiva Limited which is now an active player in the upstream and downstream oil and gas industry. The company is also into construction, procurement, logistics and security services.
So powerful is he in the industry, where he is less than five years old, that when he sneezes even the big guns at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), shiver with cold. Thus, favour seekers and oil moguls, politicians and businessmen curry his favour and friendship.
Abdullahi Rano: The oil magnate
Alh. (Dr) Auwalu Abdullahi Rano is a man perpetually in his element; the billionaire magnate’s brilliance and lofty skills continually avails him leverage as the mythical magic carpet perfects the flight of the fabled Aladdin.
Rano is rock solid in depth and proficiency hence his unfading appeal to the hierarchies of the NNPC. There is no gainsaying he is extremely powerful in the oil and gas sector. Nobody jostles with him or butt heads with him within the NNPC and the private business sector.
Rano is indeed close to the powers that be. He gets massive allocations in the corporation with support from powerful people in government.
The billionaire magnate, with business concerns in Chad, started marketing and distributing petroleum products on a very small scale in 1994 with the dream of becoming a leader in the downstream sub-sector of the petroleum industry.
Born and raised in the town of Rano, a small Hausa-Fulani Community in Kano State, he built his first retail outlets in Kano State in 1996, and he incorporated A. A Rano Nigeria Limited in the Year 2002.
As a philanthropist of note, he founded the renowned A. A Rano Foundation, a Non-Governmental and Non-Profit Organization that focuses on community development projects including health, education, provision of portable water, youth and women empowerment.
Rano internalised a visionary culture of industry at an early age. From adolescence through adulthood, he sought to acquire the inexhaustible ropes of humility, industriousness and sincere modesty.
This is why he towers above his peers in industry and records remarkable achievement where so many others have failed.
Abdulkabir Adisa Aliu:
If youth were the season of credulity, Abdulkabir Adisa Aliu, the Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Matrix Energy Group, has reformed the naiveté of youth into the wisdom of the ancients. He understands that experience is the name foolish people give their mistakes hence, he set out to evade such mortal blunders very early in his life.
Aliu understands that true wisdom emanates not from a moment’s eloquence or any happily chosen word but from the accumulation of a lifetime’s thoughts stored up in the eyes and given life in well-thought-out actions. Such priceless sagacity and proximity to power in the Muhammadu Buhari administration became the fulcrum on which he rose to become one of the biggest players in the oil and gas industry.
Yet, if you are ever lucky to meet him, Aliu is one of those guys that would pass you by and not occasion a double take. He is understated and self-effacing but among peers, he has the gift of presence. When he walks into a room, people sit up, straighten their ties or adjust their garbs, hold their breath, and listen with rapt attention. Insiders in the mafia-esque oil and gas sector affirm that Aliu is hands down one of the wealthiest and most powerful young men operating in that sector.
Though he has been running his integrated oil marketing and trading company since 2004, his heat was not that hot, and not much was known about him until President Buhari came into office. It is a well-grounded insinuation that he might be one of the major beneficiaries of the Buhari presidency because of his closeness to the First Family. The level of closeness is what many don’t know, but Aliu knows his way around AsoRock, and presidential aides always look forward to his frequent visits.
Apart from the Buharis, he was also close to the late powerful Chief of Staff, Malam Abba Kyari, who died in April 2020 from complications caused by the coronavirus.
Kyari was widely known as the most powerful Nigerian in the Buhari administration and having unrestricted access to him ushered the Matrix boss to a new level of boundless prosperity. An influential business journal once described Aliuas Kyari’s ‘favourite trader.’ Could he have been Kyari’s eyes and ears in that sector? The world may never know. What is sacrosanct though, is that the Osun State-born businessman parlayed his influence in the corridors of power to stride magisterially into the billionaires’ circle.
While he is not one to show off his wealth in the media, Aliyulives like the oil sheik that he is, with all the appurtenances of wealth at his beck and call. There is a gleaming private jet to ferry him at the snap of a finger to anywhere in the world and a fleet of luxury cars to boot. He is so wealthy that some of his friends wonder aloud if they were created by the same God.
As the CEO of the Matrix Group, Aliu has seen the company grow from a modest supply and distribution operation to a fully integrated petroleum products marketing and trading company with clients and suppliers across the world. Matrix Energy is currently rated as a leader amongst other companies in the downstream and logistics subsector. In July 2020, Matrix, in conjunction with VITOL, successfully secured a five-year-term contract as an off-taker lender with the NNPC which granted the company access to 30,000bpd, thus allowing Matrix as an indigenous African trader to expand its presence in a space hitherto dominated by international traders.
Matrix Energy Group was one of the companies that the Federal Government awarded oil prospecting licenses in 2022. Beyond the oil and gas sector, Aliu also has interests in the financial industry, engineering, petroleum, trading, and logistics.
