ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will commission the multi-billion dollar Dangote oil refinery in two weeks, a presidency spokesperson said on Sunday, setting up the plant for its first production since construction started in 2016.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, sees the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery – being built by billionaire industrialist Aliko Dangote’s Dangote Group – as a solution to ending the country’s reliance on imports for nearly all of its refined petroleum products.
Spokesperson Bashir Ahmad said Buhari will commission the refinery, near Lagos, on May 22, a week before he is due to leave office after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the constitution.
A spokesperson for Dangote confirmed the timing of the commissioning but did not give details.
The Dangote refinery’s cost grew to $19 billion from initial estimates of between $12 billion and $14 billion, after years of delays.
(Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by David Holmes)
