Business mogul and Africa’s richest Aliko Dangote, has denied nursing interest in acquiring Nigeria’s assets in the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas NLNG or any of Nigeria’s national assets.
Speculations have been rife that billionaire businessman was eyeing the assets to be sold off by Nigeria especially the NLNG, following his recommendations for the sale of the national assets.
Dangote was one of the first strong voices to urge the government to sell some of national assets as a means to generate required money to reflate the economy.
Dangote denied these claims on Tuesday during an Interview with THISDAY, where he stressed that his advocacy for the government to sell down some of its interest in some of the national assets was to help boost the economy as well as to stabilise the naira exchange rate, which has been under attack lately.
In an interview with CNBC Africa, the billionaire had said the government would be able to raise between $12 billion and $15 billion from the sale of the company.
“If I had challenges in my company, I would not hesitate to sell assets, to remain afloat, to get to the better times, because it doesn’t make any sense for me to keep any assets and then suffocate the whole organisation,” he had said.
“The African Finance Corporation… it can fetch them $800 million easily. My own suggestion before was that they should even sell 100 percent of NLNG. I don’t think government should be in any business of investing in sectors of LNG.
“A company like that, with earnings of $1.5 billion on the average, they should get anywhere between $12 billion and $15 billion.”
The comment had generated reactions, with some saying the billionaire was interested in buying the company.
But Dangote waved aside the criticisms, saying he offered the suggestions as “a true Nigerian who really wants the issues about the economy to be sorted out”.
“You know the issue, once your reserves are low, the banks, entrepreneurs, including external forces, would definitely attack your currency. They would speculate on your currency,” he said.
“We all know that the exchange rate of almost N500 to the dollar is not a true reflection of the value of the currency – the naira cannot be almost N500 to the dollar!
“But you see, if this thing is not handled properly, it can get out of hand. It can get to N600 to the dollar, or even N700 to the dollar.
“But the issue is, why did I suggest that we should sell some of the assets? I know the touchy one is the NLNG. I want to make it categorically clear that even if the government is selling NLNG on credit, I am not interested in buying.
“I don’t have any interest in NLNG and I will not buy it. It is not a business that I want to invest in. It is a mature business; that is what people don’t understand.
“You see, we should have invested heavily in all these Brass LNG, Olokola LNG, etc, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo started work on the projects, but we missed the opportunity.
“Today, you have massive LNG projects that have been done by Qatar, Australia and the United States is also exporting. But right now, all the gas that we have is even in the ground. Even Mozambique has a massive amount of gas and also Tanzania, and they are nearer to the markets than we are.
“So, if somebody is even going to invest in LNG, he would go to those areas and invest there and not here in Nigeria, because the investment here is daunting. So my own suggestion is that even if we must sell, it doesn’t have to be 100 per cent of our interest in NLNG.”
