President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday evening held a closed-door meeting with billionaire industrialist, Aliko Dangote, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, signalling renewed collaboration between the Federal Government and the private sector on energy sector reforms.
Though details of the meeting were not made public, it comes on the heels of Tinubu’s recent tour of the 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals complex in Lagos, and underscores his administration’s commitment to a private-sector-led approach to revamping Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
Earlier in the day, the President, through his official X account, addressed participants at the West African Refined Fuel Conference, reiterating Africa’s need to move beyond being passive players in global energy pricing.
“Africa can no longer be a price taker. We must set transparent benchmarks that reflect our true value and protect our economies,” Tinubu said, adding that Nigeria is working with regional partners to create a unified African energy market.
Aliko Dangote, who also delivered a paper at the conference titled Building an African Refinery Hub: Prospects and Challenges, decried the rent-seeking culture that has long plagued the petroleum value chain in Africa.
“Our biggest problem lies in rent-seeking throughout the petroleum value chain. When a refinery like ours emerges, it disrupts a deeply entrenched system and threatens powerful interests who prefer the status quo,” he noted.
