As he Speaks On His Experiences Thus Far:

The Dangote Refinery has been in the eyes on the storm and taken the centre stage in recent weeks on matters of energy supply and distribution in Nigeria.  Here are excerpt of his chat with the media in recent times

Nigeria Engineers

When we built this refinery, the Nigerian engineers we hired performed better than the Indians. Eighteen of them are now expatriates in Qatar.

Ajaokuta Steel Company

Ajaokuta Steel Company will not work. We can keep deceiving ourselves and keep being passionate about it, but it’s not possible.

Investors

Those people who are making noise should also go and set up a plant. We don’t want to be a monopoly, we want other players in the business. But other players cannot come to a soccer field and want to play cricket, you will wound somebody.

NNPCL

If we don’t make money, nobody will come into this business. Then you end up with only one supplier because NNPC’s refineries can never ever compete because the market here is a gasoline market. When we produce, we have 54 percent gasoline. NNPC, if they try, will achieve only 18 percent. They will produce low-value fuel oil, which is not needed today, so it will be a loss. The more they operate, the more money they lose.

Capacity

I heard the spokesperson of DAPPMAN on Arise News saying we don’t have the capacity. We  have the capacity. If we don’t have the capacity, why are we exporting? It’s the same way they used to kill textiles that they want to use to kill us.

Taxation

For every 1 naira we turn around, the government collects 50 kobo from various taxes. The government collects more money than what we shareholders take as dividends. It’s a win-win situation. The people who are calling us a monopoly, let’s say if we didn’t set up the business, the government wouldn’t have collected taxes of N600 to N700 billion from us.

Returns

Seven years ago when I went to China, and this time last week when I was there, some of them have grown to a point where I was even ashamed. It seems like I’m not doing anything. One owner of a company said that in 2024, their revenue was 60 billion. Even if I reach my target next year of 30 billion, they already have double that. I asked what they are going to be this year, and he said about 92 billion by 2025, from 60 billion.

Nigerian Billionaires

There are more people who have more liquid cash than me in Nigeria, maybe one, two, or three, without mentioning names, but when they see us going through this wahala, they run to Monaco and just stay Jeje, they don’t want to go through this hell.

Monopoly?

“We didn’t want to go into retail. It was during the time we were building this refinery that they sold Mobil, AP, and Oando. We could have bought them, the three of them didn’t cost 500 million. If we knew this was going to happen, maybe we would have done it the other way. But we didn’t want to be called a monopoly, that’s why we left that side. Restrict ourselves to production, they will become our customers, and we will have a nice party together. But if they are looking for fights, I have been fighting all my life”