The Chief Executive of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote has highlighted limited port infrastructure as the critical bottleneck of Nigeria’s solid materials, promising to deliver Olokola deep sea port “biggest largest port” in West Africa by 2028.

Dangote disclosed this recently in an interview with the State House Correspondents after meeting with President Bola Tinubu in Aso Rock, while sharing the company’s expansion plans to boost Dangote Group’s industrial ecosystem and Nigeria’s export economy.

According to him, Nigerian ports are too full to export solid materials, hence the desperation for port space.

He said: “Thinking of what to do next, for example, in Nigeria, we have a lot of solid materials, but the only thing that’s stopping us from using these minerals is actually the ports. Which ports are you going to take them to? Is it Apapa, is full? Is it Tin Can Island, is full. Lekki is only containers that they are handling.

So, there’s no where you can take it to.

“If you have ports, for example, Nigeria is an ocean core, if you are going to export, you can’t export it because there’s no where. You have a cooper you want to export you cannot. So, that’s why people don’t know why we are now opening largest deep sea port in West Africa, that’s Olokola. Olokola, I can guarantee you is going to be the biggest largest port and we will deliver it within the next two and half years.”

The businessman also revealed that the reason why Dangote Refinery has continued to reduce the price of premium motor spirits (PMS), was to compete with importers.

“Prices are going down. The reason why prices have to go down, we have to also compete with imports,” he emphasised.

Highlighting smuggling as the major challenge, he said, “But luckily for us now, the smuggling has not reduced totally. There is still quite a lot of smuggling because the price we have in Nigeria is about 55 percent lower than the price of our neighbouring countries.