•Speaks on the construction of a refinery Nigeria banks on for economic revival, his frustrations, achievements, expectations
•It’s like swimming in the middle of the sea, getting tired but making efforts to swim out lest you drown
VANGUARD
Three places have been etched as outstanding experiences for me over my years as a journalist.
One was in St. Peter’s Basilica and some ancient churches I visited in Rome while touring Europe with the Eagles in preparation for the USA ’94 World Cup finals.
The Basilica is 452 feet high. Its dome is the highest in the world. As tall as it is, the church sits on the tomb of St. Peter, one of the apostles of Jesus Christ. But the wonder to me is the use and the design of marble and tiles up to the last foot. There were no cranes when that church was built. How workers were able to brave the physical challenges to construct such an architectural masterpiece is a striking question.
The second place of wonder to me is in Egypt, the Pyramids. Everybody knows about the Pyramids but note this. The height of each pyramid (there are about seven of them) is about 139 metres and the average weight of a stone used in building them is 2.5 tons. The largest granite stones weigh 25 to 80 tons each. Now the wonder. These pyramids are in the desert. They were built between 2700 B.C. And 1500 B.C.
How did they move those large stones to the desert? How did they mount them one after the other to that height at the time when there were no cranes? You need to visit the Pyramids to appreciate why it is one of the wonders of the world.
Interestingly, a third wonder that I have just seen is not far from where I work in Lagos, Nigeria. It is the Dangote Petroleum Refinery at Ibeju Lekki in Lagos.
President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote led a large team of media and businessmen on a tour of the refinery last Sunday. A lot has been written and said about the engineering marvel. President of the Guild of Editors, Eze Anaba simply described it as ‘monstrous’.
I don’t know how to start capturing our tour last Sunday. But you may understand better when told that a tour we started at about 7.30 am ended at about 7 pm. It was a visit to the wonderland they say is seven times the size of Victoria Island. It covers an area of approximately 2,635 hectares.
It has a total storage capacity of 4.5 billion litres which can cover 20 days of crude requirement. The refinery has a 435 MW power plant that can meet the total power requirement of Oyo, Ogun Osun, Kwara, and Ekiti States. It is huge. It is massive. It is monstrous, as Eze put it. And in the words of Arise News Ojy Okpe, the elegant one Dr. Ruben Abati introduces as Ojynika Orjyyyy Okpeeeee, “It’s Dangote Planet”.
From one section to another, we rode on buses. At a time, I had the chance to ride in the same bus with Dangote himself and Devakumar Edwin, the Group Executive Director, Strategy, Portfolio Development and Capital Projects.
There were about seven other buses. It was amazing how Dangote mastered the refinery and explained the technicalities and functions of many sections. Did he witness every construction? From the hangars or quays where crude oil can be evacuated into pipelines leading to the refinery and where refined oil can be discharged into ships, we then drove to the main refinery.
We saw different plants, Petrochemical complexes, Nitrogen plants, Hydrogen generating plants, Raw Water Treatment Plant etc. We drove past more than 80 storage facilities some more than the size of football pitches. Some could store 60m gasoline products. Inside the Dangote Industries Free Zone, there are 10,000 housing units for staff. Workers are up to 30,000. We visited the fertilizer plant and its storage facility. There’s a lab for fertilizer and another huge one for petroleum products.
The refinery is built to refine any type of crude. There are control rooms. Everything about the Dangote Refinery is extraordinary. When I got close to him I asked “must a refinery be this big?”
He smiled and said “It’s the biggest in the world, it’s the first of its kind.” There were other posers from colleagues. Were there times he regretted going into this and even thought of throwing in the towel? What lessons came his way while constructing this? He was at home with every question on the bus ride and during the question and answer time after the tour.
“We possibly could have had a second thought if we knew the magnitude of what we were going into. Yes, maybe we wouldn’t have started if we knew” he said. Many saw him. Could he have stopped? Were there frustrations that made him think of quitting? “Yes, there were frustrations but it’s like when you are swimming and you’re in the middle of the sea what do you do when you’re getting tired? You have no option but to continue and swim out.”
The first frustration was finding out that a great part of the land they bought had to be sand-filled as the place was marshy. They spent hundreds of billions doing that. The next was from the indigenes who challenged any action on the land because of their shrines in the place. More compensation would have to be paid to appease the gods. There were many more. Dangote had to build a port as moving crude from the Apapa port was going to be a herculean job. Was that part of the original plan? Many other things came up as construction went on. And for the lessons, experiences, and challenges he encountered, Dangote plans to write a book. “I plan to write a book on project implementation in Africa,” he said.
They started construction of about 31 units of the refinery simultaneously. That was hectic and perhaps one of the things he could have done differently.
In Africa especially in Nigeria, you construct the roads leading to your projects, you provide your own water, security and many other things that are responsibilities of the government. But he was determined to surge on. It is always in his character to top the chart of any business venture he goes into. “We have so many things that deserve places in the Gunness Book of Records here,” he said, adding “soon we will invite them for a tour of this place to see for themselves.”
The Dangote Refinery will go public in the first quarter of 2025, he hinted. Production of fertilizer and some other items are on. The refinery is expected to start producing petrol in August. The visit to the Dangote Refinery was revealing, and mind-blowing to many. To me, it is one of the wonders of our journey as a country. It is a project Nigeria should be proud of and one government should pull all strings to ensure it benefits the people.
For better understanding of magnitude of what we have at the refinery, read 25 FACTS ABOUT DANGOTE REFINERY below. But before then, some words from Aliko Dangote may interest you.
