Practically everything that Aliko Dangote touches turns to gold based on the several business ventures he is running successfully, especially despite the global economy being so hard. After building and launching his 650,000 barrel per day refinery in May 2023, next for the President and Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Group was meant to be local steel production, so why is he ditching that now?

While attending the Afreximbank Afro-Caribbean Trade & Investment Forum in Nassau, The Bahamas around mid-June, the CEO got in an interview that was asking what he expects would be his new interest after completing the $19b-worth Dangote refinery, which he admitted owes its exceptionality to the fact that it is a plant built by Nigerians.

I told somebody we are not going to take any break. What we are trying to do is to make sure at least in West Africa, we want to make sure that every single steel that we use will come from Nigeria, says Aliko Dangote in an interview in The Bahamas.

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The vision of Africa’s richest man here is to enable his country Nigeria to be fully equipped for the Industry 4.0 that is in motion. Now, Dangote and the board members of his company want to shelve that plan so that other notable entrepreneurs who are more liquid than him take on transforming the steel industry on board.

At a public hearing held on Friday 19 July, a joint committee of the House of Representatives wanted major cement producers like Dangote to connect the hike in the cost of building materials with their cost of production, with noise over product monopoly playing in the background. At the moment, that is what Aliko Dangote, hosting journalists at his refinery wants to avoid.

Lately, the Dangote Group president has been keeping up with a tradition of speaking to various spectrums of the journalism world over his vision for industrialising Nigeria and West Africa, as well as its challenges. You know, about doing a new business which we announced, that is, the steel, Mr Dangote preps his guests.

What came after this was the bombshell and some could say call-to-action, asking others to come take the reins off him. Actually, our own board has decided that we shouldn’t do the steel because if we do the steel business, we will be called all sorts of names like monopoly. And then also, imports will be encouraged. So we don’t want to go into that.

Let other Nigerians go and do it. We are not the only Nigerians here. There are some Nigerians with more cash than us. They should bring that money from Dubai and other parts of the world and invest in our own fatherland.

Having pulled off the world’s largest single-train refinery last year, Mr Dangote has a sense of awareness that he can do anything. Sheer grits and indigenous banking support had enabled him to make history for Nigeria, but internal critics seem to want to dampen his vibrant investment spirit.

A few days ago, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority Chief Executive, Mr Farouk Ahmed, was also in a media chat held in Abuja. In the interview moments, he made sure to explain that his agency is not trying to scuttle Dangote Refinery as is being alleged.

So, we cannot rely heavily on one refinery to feed the nation because the company is requesting that we should suspend or stop all importation of petroleum products, especially AGO and Jet Kero, and direct all marketers to the refinery. 

That is not good for the nation in terms of energy security, and that is not good for our markets in terms of monopoly, although now he is facing intense criticism for his comments termed by observers as being unpatriotic.

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Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.