Everyone would see the Man in suit, but they never saw the boy in an oversized shirt. 

Aliko definitely never forgot his days in Kano. Those days when he joined his uncle to the market, begging for bulk amount of sugar, using his own shaky hands for measurement, praying that much of it won't spill off. He knew mistakes cost more than money. Trust is included. And at that moment, all he had was trust.

He left home at 21 when everybody thought he actually had a plan. Bus the truth is, all he had was a notebook, half a million naira loan and his fear of going unnoticed. 

It's funny to some when they say "Dangote started selling sugar also". But no one remembers how he sat once in an empty warehouse, as though mosquito to companies, debts encircling him like vultures waiting to confirm the death of a prey. Some days he would walk from place to place, wondering what exactly he had done wrong, if he had damaged something in their family name, is the grandson of Dantata was now just another Nigerian begging for income. 

Some of his friends also, those over pampered ones with their dads in politics made fun of him. 

“Dangote dey carry bag of rice like labourer o”

He heard it all. Every single time. 

He didn't make it to weddings. Neither to Eids. Not even to his sister's naming ceremony. The factory wasn't running on feelings. Hours were what mattered. And loss was getting much.

No one ever saw that heartbreak. How the very girl he loved chose another man because "Dangote was too busy". How he sat down at the table in his office, staring at a cold cup of tea and get wedding invitation. Not everyone build a whole empire alone, but he did so. 

He was audited in 1996 and people murmured in the background. Some claimed that he had bribed his way to success. Others, that his warehouses were just empty spaces filled with nothing but lies.

He kept silent. Allowed them speak. Through pain he learnt to listen.

Moment of Shift

The cement business sped up in 2003. Yet no one could see the sleepless nights, porr strikes and stolen shipments. Not even the trembling of his hands the day he almost lost his mother and still want present because of pursuing a shipping license.

Reflection

The Forbes Covers are always celebrated. The private jet. The refinery. But the wealth can't erase the number of times he had to swallow up pride. All the silent nights when he thought of the peers he lost, the family he neglected and the woman he never married. 

His greatest regret?

“I have Nigeria my time... sometimes, I wonder if I should have given my heart to someone too.”

This he once said quietly to a journalist who never published it.

The Cost

Although now the wealthiest Black Man in the world, he still walk into rooms that are cold, not because of the AC, but because it's all he gave up. Some nights when the factory lights are off and the city is quiet, he still hears that silence from the empty warehouse in 1982.

Some assume that wealth makes pain disappear. But like concrete, most pains just harden below the surface. 

And yet, without the wealth, no one would ever know his story.