By Adebayo Lamikanra,The Nation
Copyright thenationonlineng
There are not many Nigerians who have not had Dangote on their mind at one time or the other. At least,not now that the health of the country depends so much on the health of his enterprises, especially that of his truly enormous refinery. I doubt that the Nigerian economy would show any signs of life by now, but for the continued good health of that plant in Lekki.
Dangote has been a household name in Nigeria for quite some time now as he has been the nation’s leading industrialist for more than three decades. More than that, or perhaps because of it, Dangote has been the richest man, not only in Nigeria but in the whole of Africa. But, even he took a hit at the time when he had to divert a hefty portion of his wealth to the building of his refinery. There was a time when his name was more prominent than it is now on the list of the richest men in the world, But, not only are there new billionaires being minted somewhere on the globe every week, the wealth credited to the richest men in the world these days is simply mind boggling. Given the current situation, it is not surprising that the arrival of the first trillionaire in the world now has an air of inevitability about it. But, this astonishing phenomenon is clearly beyond the scope of this article and will be allowed to rest at this point, at least for now.
Dangote came to prominence at a time when Nigeria became a dumping ground for cement. Ships from all parts of the world sailed into the ports in Lagos bearing cargoes of cement in what quickly became a scam as each ship had to queue up at the port for considerably long periods of time during which they claimed demurrage payments for their owners even when the cement in their hold was of questions or quality and origin. Some of the ships were old junks which had limped into port on their last steam and made more money standing off the coast of Nigeria than actually plying the blue seas as part of global maritime commerce. That situation arose because of the virtual collapse of the local cement industry which had been active even before the war. There was the famous Nkalagu cement factory, the cement plant at Ewekoro and another one in Gboko but the demand far outstripped production hence the cement scarcity within Nigeria. Dangote, a young business man at the time stepped into the breach which existed then and the plant at Gboko was given a new lease of life under his management
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Today, Nigeria is a net exporter of cement. More than that, Dangote has built a cement empire in no less than ten African countries and created many thousand jobs all over the continent. He has planted his footsteps far and wide and made a name for himself and for Nigeria.
What Dangote has done for cement, he has also done for sugar. He was enabled to produce cement because of the availability of limestone, the principal raw material of cement in several parts of Nigeria. What is needed for the production of sugar is sugar cane, which can be planted in many parts of the country. This provided the cornerstone for the government policy of backward integration which persuaded Dangote to explore the possibility of producing sugar and it’s ancillary products from sugar cane grown in Nigeria. Today, Dangote produces refined sugar in the largest sugar refinery in Africa at Apapa. To supply this refinery with needed raw materials, the Dangote Sugar company is involved in the planting and harvesting of sugar cane from huge plantations along the banks of River Benue in both Adamawa and Nassarawa states. The contribution of these activities to the Nigerian economy is not only immense but growing as production activities expand within the growing Nigerian market as thousands of jobs, both direct and indirect are created. In addition, this also has a positive effect on our foreign exchange situation as the hard currency required for the importation of sugar is conserved. With his involvement in the refining of sugar, Dangote has been responsible for the inflow of foreign currency from Ghana where he has set up a sugar production facility in the same way that he built cement factories in other African countries. Here, he has introduced the backward integration policy of the Nigerian government into the neighbouring country of Ghana from where it is set to spread further afield.
There was a time, a long time ago it has to be said, when I listened very attentively to any speech coming from the Head of State of Nigeria. I considered all of them to be of great political importance and faithfully listened with the hope of hearing something of great importance. I never did learn anything of consequence from those speeches over the years so I began to treat them with studied indifference. However I was more or less entreated to listen to the last inauguration speech by a friend, which is why I was able to hear first hand that petroleum subsidy payments had been brought to an immediate end. My immediate response to this announcement was to scoff at it. After all, the same announcement had been made from all successive governments starting from Babangida nearly thirty years before when local government refineries had broken down irreparably as we discovered many years later.
Petroleum subsidy removals were always couched in the same way. The promise was made that all monies accruing from the subsidy removals were to be used for the building of roads and other such socially useful infrastructure. Only one government, ironically that of Abacha, made a significant move towards keeping that promise. Subsidies were duly removed, the price of fuel ballooned oppressively but no infrastructural development followed in its wake. Another thing was that subsidies always came back, to be removed all over again time after time. This formed the basis of my belief that sooner or later, there would be a return of the subsidy regime under the current regime. It is becoming apparent however that to all intents and purposes, petrol subsidies have not made a surreptitious return by the backdoor and the objective difference this time around has been the Dangote refinery.
By the time the removal of fuel subsidies had become a government policy plank, hopes of the resurrection of our moribund refineries in Port Harcourt and other places were making the rounds. But if the government had any hope in the ability of those refineries to give any backing to the removal of fuel subsidies, those hopes have now been seen to have been sadly misplaced. Day after day, news of fuel production in those refineries raised our hopes only for them to be dashed again and again. Finally, we are coming to terms with the inability of all the king’s men and all his horses to put back our broken Humpty Dumpty together again. There is now talk of selling those enormous white elephants presumably as scrap. We now have little choice but to pin our economic hope on Dangote’s refinery. In the light of what has happened since then, it is worth speculating that it was the imminence of fuel production by Dangote that encouraged that announcement of subsidy removal ab initio. If it was not, the removal of subsidies and the coming of the refinery can now be described as a happy accident.
I shudder to think of what would have happened to our economy in the absence of that refinery. It is now clear that subsidy was being paid on fuel which was not consumed in Nigeria. This is because the volume of petrol now used in Nigeria is hardly more than half of what it was in the bad days before the removal of the fuel subsidy. This has confirmed the suspicion in many quarters that the fuel subsidy thing was a gigantic scam. And the perpetrators of that scam are still fighting a bitter rearguard action to protect their turf. This cannot but be the case as the loot which was pocketed by the fuel subsidy perpetrators was humungous to say the least. All the rent seekers who have been gorging, mosquito-like on the riches of the land can be recognised by their united and unprincipled opposition to the Dangote refinery. That is what stands between them and paradise, to the detriment of the rest of us.
