Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, has disclosed his reason for seeking to acquire a stake in English Premier League team, Arsenal according to Forbes.
Few weeks ago, Dangote, 58, attracted widespread criticism from various quarters in Nigeria when he re-iterated his interest in acquiring the Premier League team. Many Nigerians called him out, insisting that his money would be better spent by acquiring a local Nigerian football team and promoting the Nigerian Premier League rather than spending on a foreign club.
But speaking to senior Nigerian journalists in Lagos on Saturday, the Nigerian billionaire explained that he is interested in buying the Premier League team to promote Nigeria internationally.
“The issue is that if I buy all the Nigerian clubs, the Nigerian flags will continue to remain here. But buying Arsenal will take the Nigerian flag worldwide. Just like whenever Abramovich is mentioned, the name of his country, Russia comes up. Everyone knows he’s Russian,” Dangote said.
In 2010, Dangote made an attempt to buy a small stake in the club but was rebuffed. He is still hopeful of owning the club someday and was recently quoted as saying that he intended to buy the team at the right price.
At the moment, Arsenal’s largest shareholders are American billionaire Stan Kroenke and Russian steel magnate Alisher Usmanov who own 66.6% and 30% of the Barclays Premier League club respectively. None of them has expressed any interest in selling to Dangote or to anyone.
Dangote is thought to be Africa’s richest man, with a fortune estimated at £11.3billion accrued from various businesses in cement, flour and sugar.
The Nigerian billionaire has previously said that the Gunners’ ownership needs to change in order to bring back success on the pitch, with the club not winning the Premier League in more than a decade, although they have now won two successive FA Cups .
He said: “They are doing well, but they need another strategic direction. They need more direction than the current situation, where they just develop players and sell them.”
The billionaire was interested in investing in the club a number of years ago, eventually pulling out of purchasing a 15.9% share in the company which eventually went to majority shareholder Stan Kroenke for £123m.
He has since explained his decision to pull back from that sale, saying: “There were a couple of us who were rushing to buy, and we thought with the prices then, the people who were interested in selling were trying to go for a kill.
“We backtracked, because we were very busy doing other things, especially our industrialisation.”