Africa's richest man hosts billionaire Femi Otedola and First HoldCo executives at his Lekki refinery

Aliko Dangote hosted Femi Otedola and a delegation of senior First HoldCo executives at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals complex in Lekki, Lagos, on Wednesday, with Dangote Industries describing the visit as a reflection of growing alignment between Africa's industrial and financial leadership.

Dangote Industries announced the meeting on its verified X account, posting photographs of both men at the refinery facility alongside members of the First HoldCo team. "More than a visit, the engagement reflects the growing alignment between Africa's industrial and financial leadership around a shared belief that the continent's future must be built on production, infrastructure, energy security, and long-term investment in African capacity," the company said in its statement.

Otedola chairs First HoldCo Plc, the holding company that controls First Bank of Nigeria, one of the country's oldest and most systemically important financial institutions. He has been the dominant figure in First HoldCo's strategic direction since taking the chairmanship in January 2024, overseeing a major balance sheet clean-up and driving the bank toward a N1 trillion paid-up capital target. First HoldCo recently reported a 72 percent year-on-year jump in first-quarter profit before tax to N321.1 billion, its strongest single-quarter performance in years.

Dangote Industries described the Lekki refinery as one of the largest industrial projects on the continent and said it continues to attract strategic interest from institutions and business leaders committed to strengthening regional self-sufficiency. "It continues to attract strategic interest from institutions and business leaders committed to strengthening regional self-sufficiency, driving industrial growth and reshaping Africa's economic future from within," the statement added.

The visit came at a particularly charged moment in the refinery's commercial history. Dangote filed a new lawsuit at the Federal High Court in Lagos on May 15 seeking to cancel petrol import licences issued to six petroleum marketers by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, arguing the approvals violate an existing court order made on April 29 and are inconsistent with the Petroleum Industry Act, which he argues permits imports only when domestic supply is insufficient. The refinery is currently running above its nameplate capacity of 650,000 barrels per day and supplying close to 80 percent of Nigeria's domestic petrol demand.

Dangote has described the commercial interests fighting the refinery's market dominance as a mafia, a characterisation he made in a recent meeting with Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. In that Oslo meeting, he said the people resisting the refinery's dominance are those whose businesses were built on Nigeria's former fuel import subsidy system, which cost the Nigerian government nearly $10 billion annually before the refinery came online.

The refinery is simultaneously the subject of a planned initial public offering targeting a valuation of up to $50 billion, in what would be the largest single equity offering in African capital markets history. Dangote has confirmed plans to sell up to 10 percent of the facility through a public offering on the Nigerian Exchange and other African bourses, with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Standard Bank appointed as advisers on a separate secondary listing of Dangote Cement on the London Stock Exchange, targeted for September.

No specific agenda for Wednesday's meeting was disclosed by either Dangote Industries or First HoldCo. The nature of discussions between Dangote and Otedola, including whether the visit was related to the planned IPO, the fuel import lawsuit or broader strategic alignment, was not detailed in the public statement. Otedola's team did not issue a separate statement.

The refinery, which cost over $19 billion to build and reached operational capacity in early 2024, has since transformed fuel supply dynamics in Nigeria and parts of West Africa, reducing the country's dependence on imported petroleum products and generating significant pressure on the import networks that previously dominated the market.