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Africa’s richest man and billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote, has revealed a valuable investment advice he got from the Late business mogul, Chief Moshood Abiola.
Speaking at an interactive meeting with media executives in Lagos at the weekend, Dangote said Abiola discouraged him from investing in the media. He said the late June 12 hero asked him to think twice before venturing into media business as there were dangers in media interests with other business interests.
His words: “I went to see Abiola and I said to him, you look a bit worried. And he said he could not sleep because of a publication…How many times will I be chasing reporters and running my business. Let me advise you, don’t go and do this newspaper business.”
He added: “When people realise that the paper is not balanced – you are always pro-government, it is a challenge. The worst tag a paper can have is to be marked a government paper. The general feeling is that they are eating from the government. So that is why I run away from the media. I am not saying I won’t do it.”
Before his death in 1998, Abiola was the owner of the Radio Communications Nigeria and Concord Press (publishers of the defunct Concord Newspaper).