President Muhammadu Buhari’s government helped build and finance the biggest single-train oil refinery in the world!
“… I must really confess that without the government’s support, there is no way we could have done what we have done so far,” Dangote
“By the grace of God, Mr President will come and commission (refinery) before the end of his term,” Dangote said in response to a question after a meeting with Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja April 2022 (Reuters)
How Previous Governments Frustrated Aliko Dangote For 9 Years – Until Muhammadu Buhari
Opinion: Dangote Oil Refinery is the project that breaks all known and unknown records.
Dangote will always be grateful to the one Nigerian Head of State who was not intimidated by the size of his dream and who gave him executive fiat to build the World biggest Oil Refinery of its type according to the Financial Times UK.
By the time President Buhari hands over power by 29th May 2023, he will go down in Global, Continental and National history as the World leader whose government helped in building the BIGGEST SINGLE TRAIN OIL REFINERY IN THE WORLD.
However I must add and emphatically too, that President Buhari did not become President to break records, he came to serve the Nigerian people but his selfless Patriotism has gifted him with a Legacies that might be difficult to break.
But the road to build the biggest single train Oil refinery did not come easy. The size of the project and its sheer colossal industrial power threatened past Nigerian leaders. They were nervous about industrial power becoming political power. Therefore this project was frustrated close to a decade from 2007 to 2015.
In 2007 the PDP led government stopped Aliko Dangote’s dream. No reason was given. The project immediately suffered a premature death. In 2013 Dangote revived the dream a second time – presenting a scaled down version of his plan to President Goodluck Jonathan’s government. Again the Federal Government at the time played politics with the project and scuttled Dangote’s plans.
But in 2015 immediately he came into office, President Muhammadu Buhari in line with his vision to build a self-reliant nation – Infrastructurally, Industrially and Agriculturally, immediately gave Mr Aliko Dangote executive approval including financing through CBN, to build Africa’s biggest Oil Refinery.
Dangote relocated to Lekki peninsula and dredged out a massive 2,365 hectares piece of land, six times the size of Victoria Island on the outskirts of Lagos State. This massive piece of land, the size of a small city was given exclusively to Dangote’s company by President Muhmmadu Buhari. With the massive size of this piece of land, Dangote was no longer dreaming of an average oil refinery but –
(1) Africa’s biggest Oil Refinery
(2) The world biggest single train Oil Refinery
(3) The world biggest Fertiliser Urea Plant
(4) Africa’s biggest Petrochemical Plant
(5) Africa’s biggest Industrial City
Under President Buhari’s government, the Central Bank of Nigeria pledged N75 billion cash investment into the Dangote Mega Project. While NNPC bought a 20% equity stake for $2.76 billion (N1.9 trillion). No other government in the history of Nigeria has invested N2 trillion into a single project.
Dangote Oil Refinery, Fertiliser Plant and Petrochemical Plant is not just a Nigerian Industrial feat, it is an African continental feat and could only have been achieved by a nation described as the giant of Africa.
Dangote Oil Refinery is a bold statement from Africa – challenging western stereotypes that have often described Africa as a beggarly, needy nation; a dump site for the worlds’ Industrialised nations. Dangote’s single train Oil Refinery is bigger than any Oil Refinery of its type in Europe, America and Asia including China. It has no equal anywhere on this planet!
It has often been asked what has been the key to President Buhari’s phenomenal economic and Industrial Success. The secret is his economic blue print. The Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) that has been aimed at restoring Nigeria’s economic growth while leveraging on the ingenuity and resilience of the Nigerian people. Today according to a USA Report, Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari has become Africa’s largest producer of Rice, overtaking Egypt. Below is a special report by the UK Financial Times on Dangote Oil Refinery.
Special Report Financial Times, Uk – https://www.ft.com/…/1631cd52-c89f-11e8-86e6-19f5b7134d1c
When the ship BBC Naples docked at a jetty outside Lagos in late September, it marked a milestone for Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote: the vessel was the first to land at the port he had built for a $12bn oil refinery that some say could transform his country’s economy.
Mr Dangote has never lacked ambition. He has made his money selling cement, flour, sugar and salt to Africa’s largest economy — often, critics charge, with a government-assisted advantage — and beyond. But the Dangote refinery takes this ambition to another level. There is a range of estimates about when it will be operational
But once operational, it will process 650,000 barrels of oil a day, a third of Nigeria’s daily production and more than that consumed by its citizens. It will also be the biggest refinery of its type in the world.
Last month at the Financial Times’ Africa Summit in London, Mr Dangote was understated. “We have achieved a lot — we’ve ordered all our equipment, and it has started coming,” he said. “There are quite a lot of challenges of doing this kind of gigantic project in Africa.”
The challenges are clear in the refinery’s staggering numbers. It will be built on 2,500 hectares of swampland that requires the sinking of 120,000 piles, on average 25 metres long.
The Lagos jetty extends for 230 metres and was built because no port in Nigeria is big enough to handle all the equipment it will take to build and run the refinery — including a distillation tower that will be the height of a 30-storey building. It involves the dredging of 65m cubic metres of seabed sand and the building of a 1km breakwater. It requires more concrete than the capacity of the country, so the business magnate has established his own quarries.
Nigeria does not produce industrial gas, trucks or power, so he is building all of those as well: his own gas plant, trucks in a joint venture with a Chinese company and a power plant able to produce the 480MW the refinery will need to run. By the time the project is completed, 138km of road and 180km of drainage will have been built.
The refinery will transform Nigeria’s refining industry. Its 650,000b/d capacity outstrips the country’s current total of 455,000b/d from four state-run refineries that often run at less than 10 per cent utilisation.
The project will have fiscal implications, too. By turning Nigeria into a net exporter of refined oil it should reduce demand for foreign exchange, which is 40 per cent driven by fuel imports.
The refinery will employ over 70,000 Nigerians according to the CBN, when it goes operational.
Patriot Ata Ikiddeh
Consultant & Coordinator
President Buhari Legacy Projects
The Presidency
Femi Adesina
