Nigerian billionaire businessman Femi Otedola has disclosed that he sold his stake in Geregu Power Plc to invest in the planned public offering of the Dangote refinery project owned by Aliko Dangote.
Mr Otedola made the disclosure while speaking to journalists during a visit to the Dangote Refinery on Wednesday.
While praising Mr Dangote’s industrial projects, he described the businessman as “a colossus” and “one of the greatest men that has come out of Africa.”
“That’s one of the reasons why I sold my stake in the Geregu plant to come and invest my proceeds in the IPO of Dangote Refinery,” Mr Otedola said.
The businessman said he had repeatedly appealed to Mr Dangote to allocate shares to him in the refinery’s private placement.
“On a personal note, I have appealed to him. I have been here with him 25 times,” he said, adding that as part of his compensation, Mr Dangote should allocate him shares worth $100 million during the private placement phase.
Mr Otedola described the Dangote refinery project as a transformational investment capable of freeing Nigeria and Africa from economic dependence.
“I wish Aliko Dangote is a colossus, a genius, probably one of the greatest men that has come out of Africa for delivering us out of economic slavery in Nigeria and by extension Africa,” he said.
Last December, Mr Otedola offloaded his interest in Geregu Power Plc, the electricity generation company he took public in October 2022 at a market value of N250 billion, which was valued at the time to be in the neighbourhood of N2.9 trillion.
The deal was valued at $750 million, a source with knowledge of the transaction told PREMIUM TIMES at the time. Until the completion of the share sale, he was the majority owner of the Lagos-quoted firm.
In his remarks on Wednesday, Mr Dangote revealed that preparations were underway for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of the refinery, which he said could be launched by September.
According to him, investor demand for the offering has already reached “billions of dollars.”
“There is quite a lot of demand in terms of people disturbing us, pushing us, saying we want to buy,” he said.
Mr Dangote said the goal was to allow early investors to benefit from the refinery’s future growth in the same way investors benefited from early stakes in global technology firms.
“We want it to be like when you buy Amazon or Apple… everybody has become a millionaire and that is what we want to bring into Africa,” he said.
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The Dangote refinery, located in Lagos, began fuel production last year and is expected to significantly reduce Nigeria’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
The facility has been widely described as Africa’s largest refinery and one of the biggest single-train refineries globally.
Mr Otedola’s comments come amid increasing investor interest in large-scale infrastructure and energy assets in Nigeria, especially projects linked to domestic refining and industrialisation.
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