The refinery and fertiliser projects of Dangote Industries Ltd (DIL) is expected to create no fewer than 235,000 direct and indirect new jobs when it becomes operational in the first quarter of 2019.
President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, who disclosed this at the weekend the vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo visited the projects’ site in Lagos, also stated that the projects would cost a minimum of $17billion.
The vice president assured the management of Dangote Industries Ltd of the support of the federal government towards the completion of both its refinery and fertiliser companies.
After inspecting the refinery and fertiliser last weekend, Osinbajo said: “Supporting what you are doing here is not a favour. It is not a favour that would be done to Dangote Group, but it is an important part of our own building up of the Nigerian economy. As a matter of fact, it is a crucial part of building the Nigerian economy… when people say that somebody is building something, they are doing a refinery at Lekki, your concept of that, they way you visualize that, is a structure somewhere. Maybe a couple of warehouses or two. That’s how you visualise it. And certainly you don’t think they deserve all the noise and attention and certainly not the money they might have access to. But when you come to a place like this, you fully understand that this is not just about building a refinery; it is about building an industrial hub, a modern industrial hub. That is an enormous undertaking. It’s a great thing that is being done here. And frankly, I think that we ought to give this place far more attention both as federal government and state government.”
He gave the assurance that the federal government would do all within its powers to assist and encourage Dangote to realise his dream of building the biggest refinery and fertiliser companies in the world.
The vice president further said that he informed the President Buhari the previous day that he would visit the place, the president said, “Yes, yes, yes, we need to encourage him. We need to encourage him.” I am sure he also felt like, ‘look, there’s a need to do something.’”
Earlier, Aliko Dangote had told the vice president that the $12 billion refinery would have a capacity of 650,000 barrels a day, just as he assured that there will be market for the refined products because even in Africa, only three countries had effective functioning refinery while importing from abroad.
Dangote named the countries with refinery as Egypt, South Africa and Cote ‘de voire saying our refinery be ready in the first quarter of 2019. Mechanical completion will be end of 2018 but we will start producing in 2019.”
When the projects fully take off in 2019, Dangote said it will effects help the country save $5 billion spent on the importation of oil into the country.
The refinery, petrochemicals and fertiliser plant in one spot, according to him, is the single largest stream in the world.
“By the time we complete this project, there will be opportunity to take on agriculture and say bye to poverty, because there will be jobs; no sector has more job potential than agriculture.”
He noted that the project was an ambitious one and that when completed, it would give Nigeria a new economic direction in the quest for diversification of the economy, as excess products would be exported to give Nigeria the much needed foreign exchange. That is when diversification starts.”
Source: Leadership
