“I have been fighting all my life, and I always win” — Dangote

Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Industries Limited, has spoken about some of the oppositions his oil refinery continues to face from powerful interests that once thrived on Nigeria’s now-defunct fuel subsidy regime.

“I have been fighting all my life,” he said. “And I will win at the end of the day.”

Dangote, who spoke at the 21st Annual Africa Venture Capital Association (AVCA) Conference and VC Summit on Thursday, the praised the government’s reform efforts and reaffirmed his determination to defeat what he described as a “mafia” that reaped billions of dollars annually through fraudulent fuel imports.

“For a very, very long time, we’ve been doing these imports, and there are quite a lot of people that have actually been making a lot of money out of it,” he said.

“At a point, people were making 10 billion dollars of free funds. Sometimes there’s no import, they just document that the import has formed, and go and collect the subsidy.”

He was referring to Nigeria’s long-standing fuel subsidy programme, which at its peak cost the country almost 10 billion dollars a year.

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“I thought that it would never, ever happen in a million years in Nigeria,” Dangote said, referring to the removal of fuel subsidy in 2023.

“ The government really did it in a very smart way. And there was not a single strike. Which means the mafia fell there.”

Despite this milestone, Dangote acknowledged that the battle is far from over. He alleged that the same vested interests that once profited from subsidy are now actively working behind the scenes to undermine his refinery, a facility regarded as central to Nigeria’s goal of achieving energy independence.

“They kept fighting us, bringing all sorts of types of trouble. It’s not easy, because they’ve been making free money,” he said. “We are still fighting. But like I said, I’ve been fighting all my life. I’m ready, and I’m 100 percent sure I will win at the end of the day.”

Located in the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos, the $20 billion Dangote Refinery is the largest single-train facility in the world, with a processing capacity of 650,000 barrels per day. It is designed to refine Nigerian crude oil and end the country’s decades-long reliance on imported fuel.

The project has not been without its challenges. From bureaucratic hurdles and foreign exchange shortages to run-ins with regulators.

However, for Dangote challenges are only a stepping stone to victory.