Dangote built country around refinery — Sanwo-Olu

LAGOS — Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has described the Dangote Refinery as more than an industrial project, saying its construction demonstrated Africa’s capacity to execute ambitious projects on a market-changing scale.

Sanwo-Olu spoke on Thursday at the official launch of the Africa–Diaspora Leadership Programme 2026 Young Global Leaders Convening, tagged “Building Africa at Scale,” held at the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Complex, Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos.

The governor said the refinery was built on land reclaimed from swamp, lagoon and open water, with additional infrastructure, including a jetty and power plant, developed to support the project.

He, however, cautioned that Africa’s development should not depend on individual “heroism”, stressing that the true measure of the refinery’s success would be whether the next major industrial project became easier to build.

Sanwo-Olu cited the Lekki Deep Sea Port, Lekki Free Zone and Lagos Blue Line rail as part of his administration’s efforts to provide infrastructure that would reduce barriers for future investors and developers.

He also called for greater participation by African pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and the diaspora in the ownership of strategic assets across the continent, saying Africa’s next phase of growth required collective ownership and collaboration.

According to him, the Dangote Refinery demonstrated what could be achieved when infrastructure gaps were tackled alongside a major industrial project.

“Mr Dangote did not build a refinery. He built a country around a refinery, and then he built the refinery. There was no port capable of receiving the equipment, so he built a jetty.

“There was not enough power, so he built a power plant. The plant was late; it cost far more than anyone had planned. It endured a pandemic, a currency that lost much of its value, and more than one season in which serious people whispered — quietly, and sometimes not so quietly — that it would never run.

“It runs. That is the first thing to note: Africa can build on a market-changing scale. Not in theory. The thing dismissed as unrealistic is the very thing you are standing inside.”

The governor, however, warned that such projects should not depend on individual efforts alone.

“Scale that depends on one man building his own port and his own power plant is not real scale. It is heroism. And heroism does not repeat.

“You cannot ask a pension fund to underwrite it. If Africa must wait for a builder of Aliko Dangote’s stubbornness every time it needs a refinery or a railway, then we will build one of everything, and we will build it once,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu urged the Young Global Leaders to move beyond discussions and turn the connections made during the gathering into practical projects capable of addressing real problems.

He insisted that Africa did not need the world’s permission to build, urging the participants to approach global partnerships from a position of confidence and shared interests.

He said the similarities between Lagos and New York offered lessons on how cities could be built through determination and collaboration.

“In eleven days, you will gather at 1280 Fifth Avenue, on the edge of Harlem, overlooking Central Park. When you get there, notice something. You will be standing in an island city built on water by people who arrived from somewhere else with nothing but ambition — and you will have just left another one.

“Lagos and New York are not strangers. They are the same argument in two accents: that a city can be made from the sheer determination of people who refused to wait for conditions to be perfect.

“Carry that with you. Carry the numbers, yes, but carry the harder lesson too: that Africa does not need the world’s permission to build, and that the world, if it comes as a partner and not a prospector, will find that Africa has already started.”