Dantata’s remains expected today

Posted by admin Headlines Thursday, February 9th, 2012

From ISMAIL OMPIDAN, Kaduna
Thursday, February 09, 2012

Alhaji Abdulkadir Sanusi Dantata
Photo: Sun News Publishing

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Remains of the late renowned businessman and chairman of construction giant, Dantata and Sawoe, Alhaji Abdulkadir Sanusi Dantata, are expected to be flown home today for burial. Dantata died in a German hospital on Tuesday,at the age of 66.
The Kano-born businessman, who was an uncle to one of the world’s richest men, Aliko Dangote, was also the chairman of Asada Group Limited.

Daily Sun gathered that he had before now, been visiting the hospital, abroad, in the last two months for an undisclosed ailment.
A philanthropist per excellence, the late Dantata, was born on September 1,1945, at Sarari, Dantata Quarters of Kano Municipal. He was the eldest son of Alhaji Sanusi and Mairo Dantata of the famous Dantata family in Kano.

He started his Islamic education from the age of five in 1950, and six years later, he proceeded to Sudan and then to Kumasi, in Ghana, for advanced Islamic studies. By the year Nigeria got her independence, he returned home to complete his primary education. He went to Kaka Primary School, Fagge, Kano.

Four years later, he got admission into Kano Advance Teacher’s College (ATC), where he obtained a Grade II Teacher’s Certificate in 1968. It was from then that he joined the family business, dealing mainly in cotton and groundnuts, and later became the head of the family’s business as the Managing Director, Sanusi Dantata and Sons Ltd.

By 1970, he established his own company, and named it Dantata Land and Sea. The business concern, dealt largely in transportation, civil engineering construction, and farming, among others. It was the company that undertook road construction projects in most northern states and some neighbouring African countries.
Four years later, he founded the Nigeria Industrial Group Ltd, which produced and marketed nails, chain link fencing, B.R.C. wire, and barbed wire, among other needs of the construction sector. By 1975, he, together with some German partners, established the Dantata and Sawoe Construction Company, Nigeria Limited, which became a household name in Nigeria.

He also chaired several other companies, prominent among which were Brunelli Construction Co. Ltd, Asada Granite and Marble, W. J Syndicate and Goguwasia Trading Company, Beijing China. He was also the chairman of a joint venture company with the Chinese, which manufactured Artiquick medicine for eradication of malaria in West Africa. In 1976, he was appointed chairman of Kano Textile Company. He was also on the board of several other companies, like the Cotton Ginning Co. Ltd, and Niger Farms and Foods Ltd.
He was one of those at the forefront of the establishment of the Kano State University, located in Wudil.
He was among the recent recipients of the Gederal Government’s national honour, as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR.) He was also a recipient of an honorary doctorate degree of the Benue State University, Makurdi.

As an advocate of multi-economy, he ventured into mechanised large-scale farming, including the renewable energy of bio-fuel plantation for clean environment under Asada Farms. He was at the crucial stage of developing the mining sector in Nigeria, with a view to helping in diversifying the country’s economy, by ensuring that its citizens do not rely on oil alone for revenue earnings.
He is survived by two wives, 19 children and several grand-children

-Sunwp_posts