LET DANGOTE BREATHE
By Jerry Adesewo
Nigeria loves to argue about monopoly—often loudly, sometimes lazily, and almost always without context. The latest target of this familiar outrage is Aliko Dangote and his refinery. The charge is predictable: dominance, unfair advantage, market capture. But before we reach for textbook economics and moral panic, Nigeria must pause and ask a more difficult question: what exactly are we protecting—the theory of competition, or the reality of national survival?
Because this is not an ordinary business conversation. It is a conversation about infrastructure, sovereignty, and whether Nigeria is capable of sustaining ambition without destroying it.
A Country That Eats Its Own Assets
Nigeria’s history with strategic national assets is sobering. The refineries in Kaduna, Port Harcourt, and Warri were once symbols of industrial promise. Today, they are monuments to neglect, political interference, labour sabotage, and institutional decay. Billions of dollars were spent on “turnaround maintenance,” yet the refineries remained largely non-functional. What we perfected instead was import dependency.
Against this background, it is intellectually dishonest to pretend that Nigeria has a healthy, competitive refining sector waiting to be disrupted by Dangote’s success. There was no functional sector to begin with—only a system designed around imports, rent-seeking, and foreign dependency.
So when a private citizen steps in to do what the state could not sustain, the reflex should not be suspicion. It should be protection.
Scale Is Not Sin
Dangote did not dabble in refining. He committed over $23 billion—about ₦34 trillion—to build the largest single-train refinery in the world. For context, Nigeria’s 2025 federal budget is roughly ₦55 trillion. One individual invested more than half of what the nation plans to spend in a year—and did so within Nigeria, not Malta, not Estonia, or other places where modular refineries by other Nigerians are reportedly hidden.
This was not opportunism. It was not speculative capital. It was a long-term, nationalistic bet placed in one of the most hostile investment climates imaginable. Dangote could have taken the easy route: offshore investments, tax havens, global diversification with minimal exposure. Instead, he chose to build at home, inside a system with a long record of punishing those who dare to think big.
That decision alone deserves a different kind of conversation.
This Is Not Monopoly—It Is Survival
What critics conveniently ignore is that Dangote’s so-called monopoly is not built on exclusion, but on capacity. He did not push competitors out; he built something others failed—or refused—to build.
Competition, in serious economies, grows from production, not from imports. Yet Nigeria has mastered the art of calling import dependency “competition” while sabotaging local capacity. When the Petroleum Industry Act encourages competition, it assumes a baseline of functional domestic players. What Nigeria has instead is a legacy system structured to protect foreign refineries and local middlemen.
In that context, demanding that Dangote immediately face “full competition” is not economic wisdom; it is economic sabotage.
The Pattern of Resistance
Dangote’s refining journey has been anything but smooth—and that is putting it mildly. From the aborted sale of the Port Harcourt refinery under Obasanjo, to its reversal under Yar’Adua, to the decision to build an entirely new refinery with private capital, the resistance has been constant.
Since commissioning, the refinery has faced regulatory hostility, false claims of substandard products, denial of crude supply, labour disputes framed as union rights but smelling strongly of rent protection, and documented sabotage incidents—including fires and operational interference.
When denied crude locally, Dangote sourced from the United States. When unions resisted new logistics models, he invested in 2,000 CNG tankers. When accused of monopolistic behaviour, he responded not with press conferences but with infrastructure.
This is not the behaviour of a man chasing dominance for dominance’s sake. It is the behaviour of someone fighting to keep a massive investment alive.
Legacy, Not Greed
At 67, Dangote is not experimenting. This is legacy territory. Capital of this magnitude is not deployed for short-term gains. It is deployed to leave something behind—something that outlives the builder.
And the refinery is not an isolated project. Alongside it sits a deep seaport, a fertilizer plant that has turned Nigeria into a net exporter, and an integrated cement ecosystem that transformed Nigeria from an importer to Africa’s largest producer.
These are not monopolistic tricks. They are industrial ecosystems—the very thing economists claim Nigeria needs but rarely defend when it actually appears.
The Wrong Question
The most troubling aspect of this debate is not the accusation of monopoly, but the obsession with cutting Dangote down rather than replicating his model. The question should not be, “How do we limit him?” It should be, “How do we create five more Dangotes?” I am aware that as many as 40 refineries were licensed. But all we are seeing is Dangote Refinery, and of course, the Bua Refinery. What happened to all the rest?
Countries that industrialise do not punish first movers. They protect them, stabilise their investments, and then deliberately grow competition around them. No serious economy exposes its most strategic infrastructure to forces designed to cripple it—especially not when history shows those forces will succeed.
A Temporary Concentration for a Permanent Gain
To argue that Dangote deserves breathing space—even overwhelming market share—is not to argue for permanent dominance. It is to recognise reality: Nigeria needs stability before it needs rivalry. If you don’t stabilize Dangote as the first mover, with whom will the competitors rival?
A country that has repeatedly sabotaged its own assets must, at least, for once, choose to protect what works.
If Nigeria fails to do so, the signal to global capital will be devastatingly clear: invest elsewhere, extract quickly, avoid long-term commitment.
Dangote is not just refining crude. He is refining Nigeria’s industrial future. And in a country that has too often destroyed patriotic ventures, allowing him to breathe may be the most competitive decision Nigeria can make.