Dantata only completed four years of studies at Dala Elementary School before leaving because his father preferred a career in trading to Western education for his children. When he was 16 years old, he was given a share of his father"s cattle business, the purchase of cattle in the north and transport by rail to Lagos for sale.
Thereafter, he added groundnut produce buying and transport and haulage as part of his enterprise. However, he was forced to sell much of the transport and cattle business by 1947 and later added on real estate. He was in the real estate and groundnut business when his father died in 1955.
He used the inheritance to revive his transport and lorry business.
In the 1960"s, he was the largest licensed produce buying agent of groundnut in Nigeria. The system involved about five autonomous level of associates, agents, and farmers.
Also the Dantata family through marriage and cr extension is linked with a few independent trading families in Kano and Northern Nigeria.
The Dantata family operated their businesses partly through a patrimonial system of cr allocation, trade and business transfers to kin, household and others members of their clientage. Some members of these system engage in buying goods from restricted rural areas and transporting it to the city where another group of agents in the Urban area buys the goods and store them instead for Dantata.
