Aliko Dangote unrolls!

The world’s richest black man with a fortune of $12.1 billion (FCFA 6,655 billion), Chairman of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has said that the $2 billion (FCFA 1,100 billion) urea granular fertiliser plant at Ibeju Lekki, Lagos, will commence operations this week.

The announcement was made by Aliko Dangote on Saturday during a visit to the Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s facilities at the Lekki Free Trade Zone and Dangote’s petrochemical refinery facilities. The billionaire businessman, who announced that operations at the fertiliser plant will commence this week, also revealed that the refinery plant will be completed later this year and production will commence in the first quarter of 2022.

The fertiliser plant has an annual capacity of three million tonnes of urea and ammonia, the largest in the world. It is also being built in the Lekki Free Trade Zone, which is home to other factories and plants, including the Dangote refinery and the 650,000-barrel-per-day Lekki port.

This makes Nigeria the only urea exporting country in sub-Saharan Africa, with fertiliser and petrochemical plants capable of generating $2.5 billion (CFAF 1,375 billion) per year.

Godwin Emeiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, had assured that the arrangements were aimed at enabling the Dangote refinery to sell refined petroleum products in naira at the start of production, which will save foreign exchange for the country.

« I am saying that by this time next year, our cost of importing petroleum products for petrochemicals or fertilisers can be saved which will save Nigeria’s reserve, » Godwin Emefiele had said.