LAGOS – Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of X3M Ideas, Steve Babaeko, has shared a personal encounter with Africa’s richest businessman, Aliko Dangote, using the experience to caution against making assumptions about relationships based on social media photographs.

Babaeko recounted the incident in a post on LinkedIn, describing how he met Dangote while travelling on a Lufthansa flight from Lagos through Frankfurt.

According to him, the business mogul attracted significant attention from fellow passengers immediately after disembarking, with many eager to take photographs with him. He recalled that one woman even handed Dangote her infant child for a commemorative photograph, a gesture the billionaire graciously accepted.

However, Babaeko said the defining moment of the encounter occurred later in the airport lounge when Dangote approached him in search of a place to charge his mobile phone.

After exchanging greetings in Hausa, Babaeko directed him to an available charging point beside his seat. He said Dangote entrusted him with his phone and charger before walking away to get some refreshments.

During the brief period Dangote was away, Babaeko said the phone rang, but he chose not to answer the call, believing the caller could always call back. As boarding for his connecting flight commenced and Dangote had yet to return, he unplugged the phone and searched the lounge until he located the businessman and returned it to him.

The communications executive noted that the incident lasted only about 30 minutes, but weeks later, after posting a photograph they took together, he was inundated with requests from people seeking introductions to the billionaire entrepreneur.

According to Babaeko, many assumed that appearing in a photograph with Dangote meant he enjoyed a close personal or business relationship with him.

He said the experience illustrates how social media images can create misleading impressions of access, influence, or familiarity where none exists.

“The photo was real. The moment was real. The access people imagined existed only in their minds,” he wrote, urging people to avoid drawing conclusions about relationships based solely on images shared online.

Babaeko, however, acknowledged that his agency, X3M Ideas, had previously worked on a marketing campaign for Dangote Cement, stressing that the airport encounter itself was entirely unrelated to that professional engagement.

His reflection has since sparked conversations on social media about perception, networking, and the assumptions people often make about influence and access in the digital age.