Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo has said he assigned two security personnel to Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote’s cement construction site to report whether contractors were working, enabling him to follow up on construction progress.
Obasanjo recounted the arrangement during the groundbreaking ceremony for Dangote’s planned refinery in Lamu, Kenya, on September 30, 2026.
“I put two security men on his site,” Obasanjo said, according to Sahara Reporters’ account of the speech.
Okay News reports that Obasanjo said the personnel would tell him when contractors had not worked, prompting him to telephone Dangote and ask for an explanation.
In his account, Dangote initially did not know about the monitoring and later expressed surprise that the president appeared to know more about the private project than he did.
Obasanjo said he regarded the investment as a Nigerian project whose progress concerned the government, despite its private ownership.
The former president linked the monitoring to his administration’s effort to encourage local cement manufacturing. Recalling an episode he placed in 2003, he said he called Dangote early one morning to ask why he was importing cement rather than producing it.
According to Obasanjo, the businessman’s answer was that importing and selling cement was more profitable. He said Dangote proposed linking permission to import the commodity to domestic production.
Obasanjo said his administration subsequently required would-be importers to show their plans for local manufacturing. He recalled that some officials doubted Dangote would carry out his proposed factory project.
Kenyan President William Ruto, responding at the ceremony, said comparable involvement in Kenya would attract accusations of micromanagement, The Star reported.
Kenya’s Ministry of Roads and Transport confirmed the September 30 groundbreaking for the Lamu refinery, which has a planned crude-processing capacity of 700,000 barrels per day. The project is separate from the cement investment described in Obasanjo’s recollection.
