Twitter verifies Aliko Dangote, gets 27,000+ followers in 24hrs

 ITRealms:

 The genius in Alhaji Aliko Dangote may have played out on the last day of 2013 when his Twitter handle was proclaimed as having attracted over 13,000 followers without a single Tweet, and has continued to trend, reports REMMY NWEKE.

At AlikoDangote as at December 30, 2013 was nobody officially on Twitter, although he had other six Twitter accounts struggling to differentiate themselves with figures.
But soon after it was verified as the authentic Twitter handle for Aliko Dangote, at about 15.1 hours, that is 3:01 PM on Tuesday, 31 December 2013, when the news began to trend as the official Twitter account of the president of Dangote Group till about 6am on Wednesday, January 1, 2014, there was no tweet on the handle which had garnered some 15,421 followers, and following 7 persons.
In the light of his first tweet @AlikoDangote, which got 2,494 retweets after 20 hours on January 1, 2014, the handle also got 463 favourites within the time under review.
The seven persons being followed by AlikoDangote comprised FF:DeepBlueEnergy@Love_Nkem; Jeff Immelt, the chairman and chief executive officer at General Electric; Jack Welch an author, commentator and executive chairman of the Jack Welch Management Institute, a business school offering an Executive MBA at Strayer University.
Also being followed by Aliko Dangote are the former first family of United Kingdom, Mr and Mrs Gordon and Sarah Brown at the verified account @OfficeGSBrown. Whereas the official Twitter feed for the Office of Gordon & Sarah Brown, has its signatures for Tweets written by Gordon as ‘GB’ and by Sarah as ‘SB’.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) whose% verified account @davos, is the official account of the World Economic Forum, which claims commitment to improving the state of the world, organizer of the Davos Annual Meeting.
Another person Aliko Dangote is following is Mr. Bill Gates, who is the chairman of Microsoft Corporation, a global software giant @BillGates and finally, the Dangote Group, described as the most diversified manufacturing conglomerate in West Africa.
Significantly, Aliko Dangote also has varying followership such as Love_Nkem who is ardent fan of the Blues has some 4,536 followers and Dangote Group - 7,979, while Jack Welch nets 1.418.121; Jeff Immelt has 16,107, the Brown’s family has 20,053, WEF boosts of 1,990,966, Bill Gate pride himself with 14,437,881.
Aliko Dangote who is the President, Dangote Group, says he is passionate about touching the lives of people and requested followers to also join him on Google+ @http://gplusid.com/AlikoDangote.
However, there are some six other Twitter handles associated with Aliko Dangote, before this verification, namely the @Alikodangate7 @Alikodangate21 @Alikodangate463 @Alikodangate3, @Alikodangate8 and @Alikodangate_ before now.
For instance, Alikodangate7 lays claim to being the official Twitter handle of Aliko Dangote which has at the time of this report 13 tweets, and 108 followers. The Alikodangate21 has only just two Tweets and 56 followers; Alikodangate463 has only two tweets, following 1, with 18 followers; while Alikodangate3 has 17 followers and nothing more.
Equally, Alikodangate8 says the handle is for President, Dangote Group ... Passionate about touching the lives of people with two Tweets, four following and 13 followers; and @Alikodangate_ incidentally has one tweet and follower respectively with everything the verified handle has except for the underscore beside the name.
From all indications, these unverified Twitter handles have relations with Aliko Dangote and one hopes that in the coming days, they would be permanently dealt-with since Twitter has now verified one.
ITRealms recalls that Alhaji Aliko Dangote, was born on April 10, 1957 in Kano State, northern part of Nigeria, and has grown to become a revered Nigerian business magnate, with an estimated net worth of $20.8 billion USD as of November 2013, according to the Wikipedia, an online open source encyclopedia.
Based in Nigeria, he is the owner of the Dangote Group, which has interests in commodities with operations in his homeland and several other countries in Africa, including Benin, Cameroon, Togo, Ghana, South Africa and Zambia.
Alhaji Dangote is ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 43rd richest person in the world and the richest man in Africa.
Also, Dangote, a wealthy Muslim had an eye on business since his young age. He 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.” He studied business from the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt and thereafter returned to Nigeria to borrow from his uncle Sanusi Abdulkadir Dantata, who gave him an initial loan of  500,000, at the age of 21 years old to start a business.
The Dangote Group which started as a small trading firm was established in the year 1977 and has today become a multi-trillion naira conglomerate with many of its operations in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo.
Currently, Dangote has enlarged his line of businesses to also cover food processing, cement manufacturing, and freight. Also the group dominates the sugar market in Nigeria and is a major sugar supplier to the country’s soft drink companies, breweries, and confectioners.
Dangote Group has also moved from being a trading company to being the largest industrial group in Nigeria and these including Dangote Sugar Refinery, Dangote Cement, and Dangote Flour just to mention but a few.
In the month of July 2012, he approached the Nigerian Ports Authority with the idea of leasing an abandoned piece of land at the Apapa Port, which was welcomed and approved. He later went to build facilities for his flour company there.
Equally, in the 90’s, he 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 which was also approved.
Today, Dangote Group has dominance in the sugar market and its sugar refinery is the main supplier of about 70 per cent of the market to the country’s soft drinks companies, breweries and confectioners. So, the largest refinery in Africa and the third largest in the world producing 800,000 tonnes of sugar annually.
Additionally, Dangote Group owns salt factories and flour mills and also being a major importer of rice, fish, pasta, cement and fertilizer. The company 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 the whole of West Africa.
Dangote is also exploring into telecommunications and has started building 14,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables to supply the whole of Nigeria and as a result, he was honoured in January 2009 as the leading provider of employment in the Nigerian construction industry.
On November 14, 2011, Dangote was awarded a National Honour, the Nigeria’s second highest honour, Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) by the President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan; the controversy generated thereof remain undusted until after 2015 general elections.
As at press time, AlikoDangaote seems to lead Nigerians on Twitter within a twinkle of days of getting his official Twitter account verified.



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