The richest man in Africa, Aliko Dangote has pledged to assist Nigerian Government to turnaround the country’s economy.
He is targeting making significant improvement in critical areas of Nigeria’s economy like petrochemical fertilizer and cement production.
Dangote gave the assurance on Friday in Lagos, while being honoured by The Guardian Newspapers Limited as its “Man of The Year 2015”.
According to him, “We want to do that by looking at critical areas where Nigeria is not doing well in terms of local production and tackle the problem areas.
“Number one is refinery. Dangote Group is building a refinery, which will produce 650,000 barrels of petrol per day.
“The current capacity that we have as a country now, both the ones that are working and the ones not working, is just 450,000 barrels per day.
“Our petrochemical is 10 times that of Eleme. We are at 1.3 million, Eleme is 120,000. So it will be the largest petrochemical industry in Africa.
“In fertilizer production, we are not only trying to satisfy the market, but our size is three million tonnes, which is 10 times more than what is available in Nigeria today.
“We are trying to make sure we satisfy the local needs and also export. And we thought about how to address our power issues. The only way we can address power issues is to have enough gas and sort out distribution.
“Distribution is important because unless you collect money from the consumers, you cannot grow.
“There are two sub-sea gas pipelines coming from Bonny, which will produce about three billion volume of gas, which is exactly about the same size of LNG.
“We are committed to turning around the economy of Nigeria and in the next two and a half years, Nigeria will be the highest oil petroleum products export country, will be the highest in terms of fertilizer export, will be the highest in petrochemicals export.
“Nigeria will also be the highest in terms of cement export in Africa.”
Publisher of Guardian Newspapers Limited, Lady Maiden Ibru, said Dangote was picked for the honour because of positive impact he has made on the lives of Nigeria and on the African continent.
