Africa’s richest man and President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has alleged that some influential fuel importers fought hard to frustrate the establishment of his $20 billion refinery.

He said the “fuel mafia” feared that the refinery would alter the trade flows that encouraged massive importation of refined petroleum products into Nigeria despite the country’s status as a major crude oil producer and exporter.

According to him, he was determined to end the prolonged fuel queues in Nigeria, noting that it was worrisome that Nigerians sometimes spent hours and even days trying to buy fuel at filling stations.

He said the refinery project, launched in 2013, encountered many obstacles, some allegedly created by entrenched interests in the oil business. He added that the cost of building critical infrastructure such as a port, heavy equipment facilities and a treated water plant was enormous.

Dangote stated that despite the challenges and discouragement, he pushed ahead with the project in order to strengthen Nigeria’s — and by extension Africa’s — energy security.

In an interview with the Chief Executive Officer of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Nicolai Tangen, Dangote said:

“We looked at oil. Africa produces oil, but many countries don’t refine it. They export crude and import refined products, which drains foreign reserves.

“In Nigeria, we had fuel queues for more than 50 years. People queued for days during Christmas just to buy petrol in an oil-producing country. Government refineries were not functioning properly, so I decided to take the bold step of building a refinery.”

Providing more insight into the refinery project, he said: “We launched the project in 2013. Land acquisition alone delayed us for five years. Some of these obstacles were created by entrenched interests in the oil business – what you might call a mafia – trying to stop us from solving these problems. But we stayed focused.

“When we started, the naira exchange rate was N156 to the dollar. At one point it went as high as N1,900, but we still continued. We had to build our own port because no existing Nigerian port could handle the heavy equipment. Some individual pieces weighed up to 3,000 tonnes. We built roads, water infrastructure and other facilities from scratch. The refinery alone uses 440 million litres of treated water. Our water treatment section covers more than 30 hectares.”

He further stated: “About 67,000 people worked on the refinery project. That’s the size of the town where I grew up. Honestly, we were lucky we didn’t fully understand the enormity of what we were building at the beginning. If I had seen the full scale immediately, I might have chickened out.

“It was like swimming across the ocean. Once you’re in the middle, you can’t go back, so you keep moving forward.

“We got support from African Export-Import Bank, African Finance Corporation, Zenith Bank, Access Bank, United Bank for Africa and other Nigerian banks. We also had strong support from Standard Bank and Standard Chartered. We were very lucky. And when we completed the refinery, the results exceeded our expectations.” (Vanguard)

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