By Vera Chinonso Aliyu, YeyeNews.com, September 21, 2021
The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN) has made an offer to Nigerian billionaire and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, to buy the Dangote Refinery being built at Ibeju Lekki, Lagos State.
This move by MACBAN, Yeyenew.com learned from sources, is coming at the heels of a recent report that Aliko Dangote had talks with some major oil traders to secure a loan facility to finance the refinery project. The construction and building of Dangote Refinery, a 650,000 b/d facility started in 2016 and there are concerns that the new completion date of 2021 will not be met. The project was originally earmarked to be completed in 2018 at an initial cost of US$12 billion. Inside sources however revealed to YeyeNews .com reporters that the cost of construction has ballooned to over US$19 billion due to incessant delays.
Though the Nigerian government through its oil company NNPC has acquired a 20% equity for about US$2.8 billion in the refinery, but it seems Dangote still needs some more external funding. YeyeNews.com learned that the acquisition, which shocked many business analysts, was seen in many quarters as a favor or patronage done to Dangote, a northerner, by a reckless, out-of-control and predominantly Fulani government and had no investment or business merit.
One of our sources who is a high ranking official of MACBAN said rather than offer Dangote a loan, the cattle breeders are proposing a complete buy-out as the refinery project is seriously cash-strapped. He said the projections by MACBAN’s in-house experts show that with the current debt burden on the Dangote Refinery, it will be almost impossible to meet the 2021 completion deadline. A top official of the refinery confirmed the move by MACBAN to Yeyenews.com. He said MACBAN executives presented their proposal to Dangote at a secret meeting held in an exclusive suite at Sheraton Hotels, Abuja. He further stated that some top government officials are putting pressure on Dangote to accept the MACBAN deal.
Asked about how the cattle breeders association intend to raise such huge capital to purchase the refinery, our source in MACBAN said everything has already been worked out in the association. “We just want Dangote to accept our deal and everything is done” he said. This deal will prove to rest of the country that our cows are worth more than gold and oil,” he added gleefully.
However, a top official of a rival cattle breeders’ association, Miyetti Allah Kauta Hore, who spoke with our correspondent insists that there is no way MACBAN could raise the kind of money required to buy the refinery from proceeds of cattle sales as they claim. The official claimed that MACBAN has been acting as a front for a Wahabi organization in Saudi Arabia that had been funneling funds into Nigeria through MACBAN to build “herdsmen housing estates” across the country so that the herdsmen could come out of the bushes and settle in modern palatial buildings.
Another official that was also present told our YeyeNews.com reporter that the Saudis “find it deplorable that our Muslim brothers would be living in the bushes in this 21st century” and that is why they have been funneling these huge funds for the housing project through MACBAN. The officials expressed shock that MACBAN could abandon their brothers in the bushes and divert the funds to an unrelated venture.
“If the MACBAN executives are using this money meant to rehabilitate our brothers and sisters to buy Dangote Refinery for themselves, that is against the Sharia Law”, they concluded in an angry outburst.
An anonymous source within MACBAN confided in our reporter that MACBAN executives decided to abandon their brothers in the bush because they know that the ‘new business’ the herdsmen are doing in the forest is very lucrative and they can afford to live in cities if they want. The MACBAN executives therefore see the money from the Wahabi organization as an opportunity to enrich themselves and become “big men” knowing that Sharia Law in Nigeria only affect the poor, the source added.
