Aliko Dangote says a network of local and international “oil mafia” interests tried to frustrate his $20 billion refinery project with economic, financial, and physical sabotage.
Speaking in an interview with Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the billionaire said the group feared the refinery would disrupt Nigeria’s reliance on imported refined fuel.
“We launched the project in 2013. Land acquisition alone delayed us for five years,” Dangote said. “Some of these obstacles were created by entrenched interests in the oil business – what you might call a mafia – trying to stop us from solving these problems. But we stayed focused.”
He said Nigeria’s decades-long fuel queues and underperforming government refineries pushed him to take the risk. Building the plant meant constructing a new port, roads, and a water plant from scratch, with some equipment weighing up to 3,000 tonnes.
The naira’s collapse from ₦156/$ to nearly ₦1,900/$ during construction added to the strain, but Dangote said backing from African Export-Import Bank, African Finance Corporation, and Nigerian banks kept the project alive.
“About 67,000 people worked on the refinery project. That’s the size of the town where I grew up,” he said. “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.”
The refinery now uses 440 million litres of treated water daily and, according to Dangote, is performing beyond expectations.
[Adapted/culled from Eagle Online]
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