The chairman of Dangote Refinery, Aliko Dangote has said that attempts were made on several occasions to undermine his $19 billion refinery project in Lagos by both local and foreign criminal organizations, which he referred to as the “mafia.”
During his address at the Afreximbank Annual Meetings, Dangote compared the drug and oil cartels to a more powerful mafia that is determined to keep control of the business, according to The Punch.
He said “Well, I knew that there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, they are stronger than the mafia in drugs. I can tell you that. Yes, it’s a fact.”
Dangote said they tried in many ways to stop him.
“But I’m a person that has been fighting all my life. You know, so I think it’s part of my life to fight.
He added, “As a matter of fact during the COVID period, some of the international banks were looking forward to making sure that they push us into default of our loans so that the project would just be dead. And that didn’t happen with the help of banks like Afreximbank.”
The Dangote refinery with a 650,000-barrel refining capacity in optimal production is expected to reduce Nigeria’s over-reliance on imported petroleum products
