Let’s be clear, Aliko Dangote is not running a charity. He is a businessman. His $20 billion refinery project is, first and foremost, a business designed to be profitable, enhance market power, and gain a toehold in the global oil value chain. That much is clear. What is also clear is that his refinery is a long-overdue escape from Nigeria’s ignominious dependence on foreign fuel.
And that disruption is precisely why entrenched interests are putting a noose around the project.
For years, fuel importers and depot operators and their allies — under such banners as the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN) — have lived off of a skewed business model: importing what Nigeria was capable of processing, profiting from subsidies, and bingeing on inefficiencies. A working local refinery is their worst fear. It threatens to annihilate their billion-naira rent streams they’ve shielded for decades. Their reaction? Arm-twisting to get more import permits, even if domestic manufacturing is gaining momentum.
The unions, notably PENGASSAN, frame their resistance differently. They raise concerns about jobs, about fairness, about monopoly. Some of these arguments touch real issues, but the undertone is clear: a fear of losing relevance in a system they have long negotiated and leveraged to their advantage.
Caught in the middle are the regulators — too readily yielding to lobbies — who hesitate to enforce domestic crude supply obligations, delay in tightening quality standards, and send conflicting signals to investors. Instead of serving as neutral referees in Nigeria’s energy transition, they are too readily entangled in turf battles of yesterday.
In the meantime, ordinary Nigerians are paying the price.
The question is not whether or not Dangote has to be imagined as a national hero. He is not one. He is a capitalist looking to pull off viable business interests. The actual question is why Nigeria allows vested interests to strangle the one project that can turn the tide away from a century-long tradition of import dependency.
This has nothing to do with Dangote the person; it has to do with Nigeria the country. Do we want to keep being held hostage by cartels that profit from our vulnerability? Or do we want to create a space where local refining, Dangote’s or anyone else’s, is free to function, compete, and stabilize the economy?
The government must tighten the noose. Support local refining. Enforce the supply pledge. Save Nigerians, not cartels. A refinery should not be choked before it is allowed to breathe.
