Vunderkind
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The palatial home of Ahmed Mai Deribe, the famed billionaire of Bornu, in northern Nigeria is purported to be the most expensive home ever built in modern Africa.
Fit for a king, the mansion which was completed at a staggering cost of $100 million in 1991 is today a tourist attraction for people brave enough to visit the battleground that its location, Maiduguri, has become.
Northern Nigerian oil barons like Deribe, who is now late, got their start as businessmen in the freewheeling days of military rule in Nigeria when the government, dominated by Northerners, dispensed favours by gifting off state-owned oil fields to friends and cronies.
The beneficiaries in turn controlled a disproportionate amount of the Nigerian economy through their dominance of the country’s natural resources, even as the northern regions progressively got poorer over the years.
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Source: BusinessDay
Fit for a king, the mansion which was completed at a staggering cost of $100 million in 1991 is today a tourist attraction for people brave enough to visit the battleground that its location, Maiduguri, has become.
Northern Nigerian oil barons like Deribe, who is now late, got their start as businessmen in the freewheeling days of military rule in Nigeria when the government, dominated by Northerners, dispensed favours by gifting off state-owned oil fields to friends and cronies.
The beneficiaries in turn controlled a disproportionate amount of the Nigerian economy through their dominance of the country’s natural resources, even as the northern regions progressively got poorer over the years.
Click here to read more
Source: BusinessDay