His shady associates and wrongheaded policies are making a bad problem worse.

Relations between the two countries, long bound by common interests in oil and security, have strained over what some analysts see as a more assertive Saudi foreign policy.

Outside of business and financial circles, Dangote is not well known in the United States. Perhaps that is largely because his business interests—banking, cement, sugar, salt, agriculture, and manufacturing—are centered in Nigeria and Africa rather than overseas.