The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, has thrown his weight behind the Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), telling residents of Kano State that owning shares in the facility offers a rare chance to build lasting wealth while pushing back hard against those criticizing the project.
Speaking at a roadshow on Thursday in Kano promoting the refinery’s “People’s IPO,” the Emir pointed to Kano’s long commercial history as reason enough for its people to get involved in the offering, calling equity ownership one of the surest paths to long-term financial security.
Sanusi shared memories from his time as a Credit Risk Management Officer at United Bank for Africa in the late 1990s, when he first came into contact with Aliko Dangote as the businessman was shifting from trading goods to building large-scale manufacturing operations.
He said what looked at the time like a risky bet — borrowing short-term to fund long-term industrial ambitions — was actually a sign of Dangote’s resolve to build real production capacity and cut Nigeria’s reliance on imports.
That strategy, he explained, rested on a straightforward idea: make locally what Nigerians use every day instead of shipping it in from abroad.
He recalled Dangote’s own reasoning that someone has to produce the country’s fuel, cement and food rather than leaving Nigeria dependent on Asia, Europe and America for them.
Drawing on his background as a former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, the Emir said the refinery tackles a problem that has drained the country’s foreign reserves for years — Nigeria earning dollars from crude exports only to spend much of it importing refined fuel.
He credited Dangote with breaking that cycle, adding that local refining could eventually turn Nigeria into an exporter of petroleum products rather than a perpetual importer.
As evidence of the refinery’s global standing, he cited reports that European airlines had turned to it for jet fuel during supply disruptions tied to the Strait of Hormuz crisis.
On accusations that the refinery amounts to a monopoly, Sanusi was blunt: there’s no monopoly without legal protection, and anyone able to raise the roughly $22 billion needed to build a rival refinery is free to try.
He urged Nigerians more broadly to put their money into productive industries rather than speculation or foreign assets, describing the IPO as a chance for ordinary citizens to become genuine part-owners of one of Africa’s biggest industrial ventures — noting that it’s shareholders, not outsiders, who ultimately collect the profits.
Still, he cautioned prospective investors to think long-term and avoid risking money set aside for essential family needs, closing with a call for Kano residents to embrace the offering as a step toward greater financial inclusion and local ownership of national assets.
