Africa’s Richest man, Aliko Dangote says fuel will no longer be imported into the country from June this year.
The business mogul spoke as a panelist at the Africa CEO Forum Annual Summit in Kigali, Rwanda.
His remark is coming amidst the recent fuel scarcity in the country that has shot up the price of petrol to over N1000 per litre in some major cities, including Lagos , Port Harcourt and Abuja, the nation’s capital.
The magazine reported that the business man has built the world largest single train petrol-chemical refinery in Lagos, Nigeria.
The refinery which started production late last year has started producing diesel and jet fuel to the admiration of not a few Nigerians who believe that the perennial problem of fuel scarcity will soon be over now that Dangote has started production.
The company had during the week announced plans to import 20 million barrels of crude oil from the United States.
Speaking Dangote said the country should end gasoline importation within one month from now.
He explained that what is being produced from the 650, 000 barrel per day capacity refinery should be enough for the continent in terms of diesel, petrol, jet fuel, potash, phosphate, and urea amongst others.
Part of what he said: “Right now, Nigeria has no cause to import anything apart from gasoline, and by sometime in June, within the next four or five weeks, Nigeria shouldn’t import anything like gasoline; not one drop of a litre.
“We have enough gasoline to give to at least the entire West Africa, and diesel to give to West Africa and Central Africa. We have enough aviation fuel to give to the entire continent and also export some to Brazil and Mexico,” he said.
“Today, our polypropylene and our polyethene will meet the entire demand of Africa, and we are doing base oil, which is like engine oil; we are doing linear benzyl, which is a raw material to produce detergent. We have 1.4 billion people in the population; nobody is producing that in Africa.
“So, all the raw materials for our detergents are imported. We are producing that raw material to make Africa self-sufficient.
“As I said, give us three or a maximum of four years, and Africa will not, I repeat, not import any more fertiliser from anywhere.
“We will make Africa self-sufficient in potash, phosphate, and urea; we are at three million metric tonnes, and in the next twenty months, we will be at six million metric tonnes of urea, which is the entire capacity of Egypt. We are getting there.
“For some of us, despite the boom of the capital market in the US—you know, Google, Microsoft, and the rest—we didn’t participate; we took all our money and invested in Africa.
“We had this dream just about five years ago, and we said we wanted to move from five billion dollars in revenue to thirty billion dollars in revenue, and we made it happen. It is possible and now we have made it happen and now we have finished our refinery.
“Our refinery is quite big; it is something that we believe that Africa needs. If you look at the whole continent, there are only two countries that don’t import petroleum products, which is a tragedy.
“They are only Algeria and Libya. The rest are all importers. So, we need to change and make sure that we don’t just go and produce raw materials; we should also produce finished products and create jobs.
Meanwhile, not a few Nigerians are asking whether his promise to end gasoline importation will lead to a considerate reduction in the price of the commodity considering the high price that is being charged for petrol and diesel across the country.
