THE name, Dahiru Barau Mangal, appeared more than 20 times in the Dubai property list, prompting Economy Post to profile him.
Mr Mangal is linked with over 20 posh properties in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, in expensive areas such as Burlington Tower. He is also linked with Oceania Hotel in Dubai , according to Economy Post‘s findings.
This investigation came to light as part of a project named “Dubai Unlocked,” which is a six-month investigation into the UAE’s booming and secretive property market led by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) together with more than 70 media partners.
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Economy Post is the only Nigerian media organisation that participated in the 2022 project.
Mangal, the billionaire
Mr Mangal is a Katsina State-born founder of Max Air. Born on August 3, 1957, Mr Mangal has interests in transportation, oil and gas and construction sectors. He was a non-executive director at MRS Oil Nigeria Plc but resigned in 2017.
Mr Mangal’s story can’t be complete without his fight with Oando’s management, particularly its Chief Executive Officer, Mr Wale Tinubu in 2017. He was a major shareholder in Oando Plc but fell out with the management of the company. This resulted in suspension of Oando’s trading on both the Lagos and Johannesburg stock exchanges in 2017.
Mr Mangal had claimed he owned a 17.9 percent stake in Oando Plc. However, Oando Plc had alleged that he owned just 4 percent, claiming that 13.9 percent was undisclosed.
Mr Mangal and an Italian owner of Intels, Mr Gabriel Volpi, both of whom claimed they owned almost 70 percent of Oando shares, went to war. They claimed that Mr Tinubu had mismanaged the firm and was pushing for their removal from the board.
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Both men then wrote to the SEC requesting the postponement of the annual general meeting scheduled to take place in the second week of September, 2017. However, Mr Tinubu did not agree with their claims, informing the SEC that both men were plotting to take over Oando and remove him from the company he had founded a few years earlier.
A truce was reached on January 7, 2018, via the mediation of Emir of Kano, Mr Mohammed Sanusi. “I am pleased we have reached an amicable agreement with Alhaji Dahiru Mangal and have satisfactorily addressed the concerns heraised in his petition to the SEC. We encourage him to exercise his rights as ashareholder and be more involved in oversight of the affairs of the Company. Shareholders must be confident in the operations of the company they are invested in; this can only occur through active participation,” Mr Tinubu said.
Mr Mangal, in his response, noted, “Following the clarification I have received from Oando’s management team, I have withdrawn my petition to the SEC. I invested in Oando because I could see its potential. It is therefore with excitement that I concur to this Peace Accord signifying the renewal of our relationship; one that gives me more insight into the Company’s operations and aspirations and involves more dialogue. I am confident in the Company’s leadership team and trust that with the right support it will continue to grow from strength to strength, returning real value to all its shareholders including mygood self.’’
Alleged smuggling
Mr Mangal is a billionaire businessman who has been successful in several endeavours. However, he is often accused of being a smuggling kingpin. An accountant and prolific writer, Mr Feyi Fawehinmi, had accused him in an article of killing the Nigerian textile industry.
“Mangal goes to China to buy materials, pays workers, produces clothes, puts them in a container, ships them to a neighbouring country, bribes customs officials, smuggles them across the Nigerian border and still gets it to the Nigerian customer at much cheaper prices than something produced on their doorstep. It’s a different thing when someone brings in something not produced in the country like iPhones. But to be so comprehensively attacked and destroyed at your own game in this way is quite sad and worth reflecting on,” Fawehinmi had said.
In a Financial Times article in February 2015 entitled, “Nigeria Unravelled,” writer Tom Burgis wrote, “From his base in Katsina, Mangal arranges the import of food, fuel and anything his wealthy Nigerian clients might desire. But the staple of his operation is the textiles that have helped kill off the local industry. The details of the alleged smuggling operation are drawn from interviews with northern Nigeria politicians, officials, businessmen and textiles consultants in Abuja, Katsina, Kano and Kaduna between 2009 and 2013. Mangal is said to charge a flat fee of N2m (about $13,000) per cargo, plus the cost of goods. In 2008 Mangal was estimated to be bringing about 100 40ft shipping containers across the frontier each month.
“Around 2005 Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military ruler then embarking on his second term as elected president, decided to do something about smuggling and the damage it was causing to the textile industry. Obasanjo dispatched Nasir el-Rufai, a northern-born minister with a reputation as a reformer, to try to get Mangal to clean up his act. El-Rufai told me that Mangal asked him, “Why does Obasanjo call me a smuggler? I just do logistics. I don’t buy any of the goods that are smuggled. I’m just providing a service.” (I tried unsuccessfully to arrange an interview with Mangal. He did not respond to questions I sent to his representative.) . . .
“Mangal and the rest of northern Nigeria’s crime lords can trace their hegemony — and the abandoned textile workers their strife — to the discovery of oil in the Niger Delta. In 1959, three years after Royal Dutch Shell struck oil in commercial quantities in the Delta, the company sank another well by the village of Slochteren in the northern Netherlands, in partnership with Exxon of the United States. They discovered the biggest gasfield in Europe. A gas bonanza followed. It was not long, however, before the Dutch began to wonder whether the discovery had truly been a blessing. People outside the energy industry started losing their jobs. Other sectors of the economy slumped, following a pattern that The Economist would, in 1977, diagnose as “Dutch Disease,'”
Mr Mangal has, however, always denied being a smuggler.
