The commissioning of Dangote’s largest refinery in the world by the outgoing president, Buhari, will solidify his reputation and place him as the greatest businessman of Nigerian descent to ever do this in less than a few hours.
It amuses me to see a lot of cynics knocking down Dangote’s greatness, his imagination, and his ingenuity by always referring to him as a billionaire who became wealthy through a government monopoly.
Doing this is diminishing Dangote’s greatness and his courage by just reducing him to a product of Nigerian government cronyism.
In 2008, Dangote took a bet and a risk that so many big men who preferred portfolio businesses that created no jobs were not willing to take at the time.
Dangote took a loan syndicated from a consortium of banks plus his fortune to build what is known as Obajana cement today.
Here is the interesting part:
That project bankrupted Aliko as he struggled to pay back the money borrowed.
The loans were given to him at an interest rate of 35%–40%, which was the prevailing rate at that time.
He did not have an option but to collect it.
As he was struggling to pay back those loans, he had to sell his prized crown jewel, which was his London property, just to pay back the loan.
As if this was not enough, he was forced to float the shares of Dangote Cement on the floors of the Nigerian Stock Exchange as a way of generating liquidity, which he did to pay back a bank loan that he utilized to build the Obajana Cement Plant in Kogi State.
I can only imagine his sigh of relief the day he paid the last kobo to the bankers and how excited he must have been that night.
After the bet, he took on Obajana cement.
Dangote has not looked back, as he has gone on to build other cement plants in Ogun State and across Africa.
Obajana was the launch pad and the baby that gave birth to all of them.
Imagine if he had defaulted. In servicing the Obajana loan, your guess is as good as mine that there will not be Aliko Dangote today.
When Aliko was building Obajana, Nigeria’s total power supply capacity was less than 2,000 megawatts.
In order not to rely on the inefficient public power supply, Dangote had to come up with a master stroke—an ingenious idea—to build a power plant that could power the cement plants.
Today, Obajana cement is off-grid, and it generates 135 megawatts, which is enough to power their plants and provide free electricity to the Obajana community.
Again, imagine for a moment that if Nigeria had a 24-hour power supply, how much would Dangote have saved for himself today without spending money to build that power plant?
When the dream to build the Dangote refinery was conceived, not many believed that the project would succeed.
Many did not give him that chance to succeed, as his dream was branded a white elephant project.
Many argued that it would fail by citing that the world is undergoing an energy transition to green energy (an ambition supported by the Biden people and his party), and many wondered where Dangote could get the money to pull such a project off since international banks are not financing such ambitious projects now because of the pressure and activism of green energy activists.
Again, Dangote ignored all that noise and criticism and did what many did not see coming.
He pledged his total net worth as a person to the project, which means if the refinery project fails, Dangote would go bankrupt and into penury.
Taking a bet the second time, not many would have boldly done
When COVID came and stalled the project,
Bankers financing the project panicked that their money was gone, but not Aliko’s.
Rather, he went on a strategy session with his Indian team on the best response to the COVID crisis.
That was sorted out and implemented in the refinery project.
Many people would have given up when they faced the kind of challenges that Aliko faced in building that project.
One of them was building his port when he saw that Apapa Port was not big enough and not built to handle an ambitious project.
What the time that Aliko ran out of money budgeted for the Dangote refinery because financiers were facing pressure from green energy activists not to finance the project because, in their argument, the refinery is a big harm to our environment and will derail the plan for the whole world to go green?
Aliko did not put his hand on his head, shouting Ewo! I don’t die.
Rather, he went to work with his team and then used the instrument of Dangote Cement to raise 300 billion nairas from the bond market to finish the project for Buhari to commission today.
Because Aliko Dangote pledged his total net worth for that refinery project, Nigeria is about to be self-sufficient in fuel: diesel, kerosine, and aviation fuel.
By taking a risky gamble by investing all his money in Nigeria, Aliko Dangote has cemented his place as the greatest of the entrepreneurs of his generation to do this.
Every developing country needs an Aliko Dangote at this stage of Nigeria’s growth.
America had Rockefeller of Standard Oil (now known as Exxon Mobil and Chevron), who built roads, bridges, and rail when America was in the same developmental stage as Nigeria is at the moment.
The reason why Rockefeller’s story is important is that he contributed immensely to what America is today.
He built infrastructure that included rail tracks, and he helped in his little way in shaping the country into the greatest country on earth today.
This is what Dangote is doing: taking a risky bet by opening up the economic frontiers of our country.
A thankless job that has made the man age so fast.
The last time I saw him, he had gray hair all over his head, looking older than his age.
The refinery project aged him so fast.
Aliko Dangote deserves flowers for this.
The Messi and Ronaldo of the Nigerian business world
Many years from now, when the history of Nigerian development is written,
A lot of people accuse him of being protected by the Nigerian government, and I ask.
At Aliko’s level of growth, you don’t need any soothsayers to tell you that it is in Nigeria’s best interest to protect him.
If Aliko Dangote fails today, the catastrophe for the economy would be massive.
No government wants that.
Governments all over the world protect big entrepreneurs because they want stability over chaos.
Moreover, big businessmen like him are protected and given extraordinary treatment and help by any government in the world where the businessman is a citizen, especially in developing economies.
Whether it is an Indian that protects Ambani Mukesh or Brazil, the experience is the same.
Historians will reserve a few pages for writing a flowering tribute to a man who is bold and larger than life.
The greatest we have seen and the finest of his generation of entrepreneurs
Such a man deserves his flowers, and it is appropriate that he takes a bow from here.
- Chukwudi Iwuchukwu