If all goes to plan, Aliko Dangote, Nigeria’s most profitable businessman and the richest particular person in Africa, is about to convey on-line a $20bn oil refinery outdoors Lagos that would remodel the continent’s largest financial system.
Beginning operations on the huge facility would mark the fruits of a profession during which Dangote, whose private wealth is estimated by Forbes at $10.5bn, has constructed a fortune via salt, flour, sugar and, most importantly, cement.
Supplied his Dangote Group can safe enough crude oil and the long-delayed plant works as it’s speculated to — neither of which is a given — the refinery might begin churning out diesel, kerosene and jet gasoline as quickly as subsequent month.
“We’re beginning with 350,000 barrels a day,” Dangote instructed the Monetary Occasions, including {that a} deal had already been clinched for the “first cargo of about 6mn barrels” for supply subsequent month.
Dangote, 66, stated he believed the refinery might attain its capability of 650,000 barrels a day by the tip of 2024, though the IMF has stated it doubts it should attain greater than a 3rd of that by 2025.
At full tilt, the refinery, the world’s largest “single prepare” facility with only one distillation unit, might save Nigeria billions in international change at the moment spent on imported gasoline. It was “shameful”, Dangote stated, that Nigeria, a serious oil producer for greater than 50 years, couldn’t refine its personal crude in something like enough amount.
Amaka Anku, head of the Africa observe at political threat consultancy the Eurasia Group, stated the refinery was “a large, sophisticated endeavor”. In a rustic the place most businesspeople seemed for short-term earnings, she added, it was a blessing “that now we have somebody like Dangote who’s keen to spend billions of his personal cash on long-term tasks”.
Dangote conceded there have been instances when he thought the huge venture — lengthy delayed and about $8bn over finances — would possibly jeopardise his enterprise empire.
“The challenges that we confronted, I don’t know whether or not different folks can face these challenges and even survive,” he stated. “It’s both we sink or we sail via. And we thank Almighty that at the very least we’ve arrived on the vacation spot.”
But in what is meant to be Dangote’s second of triumph, he finds himself beneath intense strain. A rival industrialist has accused him of underhand enterprise practices and of gaining unfair entry to international change from a central financial institution whose former governor is now being investigated by the authorities. Dangote has denied each allegations.
As well as, the Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Company has been unable or unwilling to produce him with the crude his refinery wants, though Dangote insists it’s only a matter of weeks earlier than oil begins flowing.
A number of even doubt the refinery will work in any respect, or predict that it is going to be inefficient. Rumours are additionally rife that Dangote, whom critics accuse of getting unduly benefited from shut relations with 4 successive administrations, has fallen out with Bola Tinubu, who grew to become president in Could.
“Dangote is just not as influential as he was once,” stated Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, an Oxford professor of the politics of Africa, who described the billionaire as a Nigerian oligarch. At a time when he had guess his fortune on the success of the refinery, that was not a snug place to be in, a number of shut observers of Nigeria stated.
![Vehicles travel along Broad Street in Lagos](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2Fb397aa57-69bc-4116-99bd-2ecb162de726.jpg?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=1)
“That is the primary time the elected authorities is just not significantly aligned with Aliko,” stated one senior banker who spoke on situation of anonymity. “So it has opened a window of alternative for folks to hawk their very own affect.”
For a lot of Nigerians, the billionaire industrialist has completed greater than anybody to put money into the nation and create jobs. “We want 10 Dangotes,” stated Anku.
However for others he’s a ruthless monopolist who is dependent upon the federal government to guard him from competitors and to scale back his tax invoice by giving his enterprise so-called pioneer standing.
“The Romans found out find out how to make cement 2,000 years in the past,” stated Feyi Fawehinmi, a Nigerian writer dwelling in London. “And but Nigeria is making billionaires out of it.”
Within the interview, Dangote complained that rivals had been carping as a result of they didn’t perceive what it took to run a enterprise that was the nation’s largest private-sector employer and its largest taxpayer. “Typically when folks speak about us, Dangote, it’s like the federal government is holding everyone down and permitting us alone to fly.”
He didn’t wish to talk about intimately a tussle over the provision of crude with NNPC, which owns 20 per cent of the refinery after a $2.76bn fairness buy in 2021. Nigeria produces about 1.4mn barrels of oil a day, properly in need of its Opec quota of 1.8mn barrels, with a lot pre-sold in ahead contracts.
“Let’s not have the blame recreation right here,” he stated of NNPC’s reported difficulties in assembly the refinery’s necessities. “We’ve resolved all the problems of provide.”
![A man drops a bag of Dangote cement while offloading a truck in Abuja, Nigeri](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F47600ea0-dc79-469a-9568-83bc85d01fb2.jpg?source=next-article&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&width=700&dpr=1)
Dangote rejected strategies NNPC was enjoying hardball to barter an even bigger share of the refinery, which he stated would generate income of $25bn a yr at full capability. “I don’t suppose NNPC wants to purchase extra shares. I feel they’re OK with what we’ve given them.”
The refinery would ultimately be floated as a separate firm, he stated, initially on the Lagos inventory change.
To construct the huge venture on 2,500 hectares of swampland outdoors Lagos, Dangote needed to assemble his personal port and street to take supply of heavy gear, set up his personal trucking firm to maneuver it and his personal industrial welding facility to place it collectively. He stated he had laid sufficient cable to stretch twice across the globe and had moved 65mn tonnes of sand. “You’ll not see this sort of venture in Nigeria within the subsequent 20 years.”
No outdoors contractor had been keen to tackle Nigerian threat, he stated, so he needed to design and construct the entire thing in-house. “We didn’t minimize prices. We didn’t minimize corners,” he stated. “We didn’t do it for folks to clap us. We did it for posterity.”
Nevertheless, some have chosen this second to snipe. Dangote has accused BUA Group, Nigeria’s second-biggest cement producer, led by founder and chair Abdul Samad Rabiu, of sponsoring assaults on his firm within the Nigerian press. Rabiu is value $6.5bn, in accordance with Forbes.
Tales allegedly floated by BUA Group have accused Dangote of making the most of unlawful international change trades value billions of {dollars}. The federal government is investigating foreign exchange allocations made when Godwin Emefiele, the previous central financial institution governor, was in control of distributing {dollars} on the official charge to chosen industries at far under market costs.
BUA Group responded to the claims by accusing Dangote of attempting to sabotage the enterprise for greater than 30 years, together with as soon as allegedly issuing the corporate with a dud cheque. Rabiu declined to remark.
The 2 are combating in courtroom over an alleged try by Dangote to forestall Rabiu’s firm mining limestone in Edo state. In a prolonged assertion printed in native newspapers, Dangote accused BUA Group of rehashing discredited tales and stated he might account for each greenback of international change.
Matthew Web page, a former CIA knowledgeable on Nigeria, stated Rabiu donated closely to the Tinubu election marketing campaign and had been emboldened by his shut relationship with the brand new president. The cement market was smaller after eight years of financial stagnation, he stated.
“The tide pool has shrunk and the 2 largest lobsters within the tank are snapping at one another.”
Dangote wouldn’t be drawn on his struggle with Rabiu or his relationship with the president. However he stated nothing ought to distract from the refinery — a “nationwide venture” that was “greater than Dangote”.
After years of guarantees, he was adamant that every thing was prepared. “The refinery is completed,” he stated. “The newborn can come out at any time.”