Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, says he pressed ahead with his refinery project because Nigeria could not keep bearing fuel subsidy payments he estimates at $10 billion a year.
The President of Dangote Group made the disclosure in a recent interview with Al Jazeera. He said subsidy payments had become a serious bottleneck for the Nigerian government until his 700,000-barrel-per-day refinery came on stream.
Dangote said he had to fight entrenched cartels in the country’s oil sector “hard” to succeed.
“Turning back was not an option, they were looting $10 billion every year because it was a subsidy. People were just writing numbers, the government was busy paying and sweating, but we came and disrupted everything,” he said.
He added that the pressure has since eased. “We fought them hard, they saw that we had succeeded, so now things have calmed down. Of course, we still have little flies that will come and try to disturb us,” he stated.
His remarks come as Dangote Refinery opened its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on September 14 at N525 per share on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX).
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