The founder of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has revealed that both local and international criminal organisations, which he described as “Oil mafia”, made repeated attempts to sabotage his $19bn refinery project in Lagos.
Dangote revealed this while speaking at the Afreximbank annual meetings (AAN) and AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum in Nassau, The Bahamas on Wednesday.
It is instructive to note that Dangote has disclosed that he has repaid about $2.4 billion of the $5.5 billion borrowed to build the Lagos based-refinery.
According to him, several entities did everything to sabotage the 650,000 barrels per day facility
Dangote said he was aware that resistance would always exist, but he did not anticipate it being so harsh.
He said, “Well, I knew that there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, they are stronger than the mafia in drugs. I can tell you that. Yes, it’s a fact. The local and foreign mafia tried several times to sabotage the refinery from coming to fruition.”
The business mogul , who tagged himself a fighter throughout his life, said the mafias had tried several times to defeat him.
He said, “But I’m a person that has been fighting all my life. You know, so I think it’s part of my life to fight.
“In a system where for 35 years people are used to counting good money, and all of a sudden, they see that the days of counting that money have come to an end, you don’t expect them to pray for you. Of course, you expect them to fight back.
“And I think that is the process that we’re now really going through. But the truth is that, yes, the country, the sub-region, and also the continent, sub-Saharan Africa, need this refinery.
“So, you expect them to fight through non-supply of crude, non-purchase of the product, but I think it’s all temporary. We’ll get there.”Dangote then said, “As a matter of fact, during the COVID period, some of the international banks really were looking forward to making sure that they push us into default of our loans so that the project will just be dead. And that didn’t happen with the help of banks like Afreximbank.”
The richest man in Africa also unveiled plans to diversify into the steel sector, aiming to utilise solely Nigerian-produced steel and achieve self-sufficiency
