Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote has said the Dangote Group rejected attempts by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) to increase its 7.25 percent stake in the Dangote Petroleum Refinery.
Mr Dangote disclosed this during an interview with the chief executive officer of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, Nicolai Tangen, saying the company wants more Nigerians to participate in the refinery through public ownership.
According to him, the refinery plans to go public and allow wider shareholding instead of increasing the stake held by one institution.
“If you look at our refinery, the national oil company already owns 7.25 percent, and they are trying to buy more. We are the ones that said no; we want to now spread it and have everybody be part of it,” he said.
Dangote also identified policy inconsistency as one of the major risks facing businesses in Nigeria and across Africa.
“The other biggest risk is government inconsistencies in policies,” he said.
He added that the company plans to pay dividends to shareholders in dollars because most of its revenue would come from exports.
“What we are announcing is that when you invest in any of our businesses going forward, in cement or in the refinery, in petrochemicals, or in fertiliser, we guarantee to pay you a dividend in dollars because we are very well into exports. Eighty per cent of our revenue will be in dollars,” he said.
Dangote said the refinery project received support from financial institutions including Afreximbank, Africa Finance Corporation, Zenith Bank, Access Bank, UBA, Standard Bank of South Africa and Standard Chartered Bank.
He also spoke about selling his properties in the United States and the United Kingdom to focus on his businesses in Nigeria.
“When I decided to go into the industry, I sold all my properties in the US. I had two houses in the US and a house in the UK. I wanted to sit in Nigeria and concentrate,” he said.
Dangote said his business decisions are driven by the need to produce goods that Nigeria imports.
“I first of all look at what we need as a people. What is it that we are supposed to be producing, and what are we importing? So we do what you call backward integration,” he said.
The businessman added that the refinery recently processed crude above its installed capacity of 650,000 barrels per day and that the group plans to increase refining capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day within the next 30 months.
