Dangote meets Tinubu in Lagos, says UK visit will open doors

By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

President and Chief Executive of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has said that President Bola Tinubu’s visit to the United Kingdom will open a lot of doors for the country.

Dangote also said that if nothing is done to stop the crisis in the Middle East, it will create more hardship for the people.

The Dangote Group President stated this while speaking with journalists after meeting with President Tinubu in his Lagos house.

He said he visited the President to wish him Eid Mubarak and also ask after his health, as he said that he hasn’t seen Tinubu for a while.

Asked how the President’s visit to the United Kingdom would help him as a big investor in Africa and in the world, Dangote said: “I think it has opened ways. Today, diplomacy without the economic part of it is not complete. So I believe his visit will open quite a lot of doors and you can see the agreement that was signed for actually improving our infrastructure, especially in the ports and other areas, which is almost £746 million, that’s quite a lot.

“It’s not that easy dealing with the British, getting this kind of money out of them. They too are struggling on their own. But I think this shows confidence; it’s not about the money, it’s about the confidence in Nigeria.

“So the moment they do that, there will be other countries that will follow suit. So it’s not the £746 million; we too can do that to any other country and invest.

“But I think it is something to show an appreciation of Mr. President’s good work, the infrastructure he has been building, this will help and complement, but there will be other countries that will do. Germany will come, others… so they will line up and start coming now. This is supposed to be a win-win situation.”

Fielding questions on how Nigerian investors should make the best out of the visit, he said: “For Nigerian investors, it has shown that we can also go to the same agency and tap the resources. It means that the agency now is open for business for Nigerians, and we will go as private people to look for them to give us support.

“It’s a credit agency, which we haven’t really tapped those resources for a very long time. So I think with what has happened now, it shows that there is capacity for them to fund some of our projects.”

On the effect of the volatility of the oil sector on Nigeria and other parts of the world, he said that the unfortunate situation means a lot even though Nigeria doesn’t have much to do with it.

“You know the world is a global village, and it definitely will affect us, unfortunately. But we pray this situation will be sorted out, it’s not going to escalate. If it doesn’t de-escalate, we’ll end up paying big prices.

“Like what I said earlier on CNN, if you look at it today, Africa is very busy paying debts and putting this again on top of us is going to add a lot of hardship on the government, on the people, on everybody, for something that we have no, really, any involvement in.

“If you look at it now, when you talk about energy, energy affects almost everything and it’s not only energy, some people will try and take a chance and say this is an opportunity so let me make money.

“So if this thing doesn’t de-escalate, it is going to keep going up and up and up and governments cannot really now go and add salaries. So people will really feel the heat. People like barbers, people who are making bread, people who have industries, who have to power their own generators.

“I mean, you can see, in some countries today what they’ve done is ask everybody to work from home because they cannot… I think in Indonesia or so, they said only go to work four days a week and they will look at the situation, if it doesn’t improve, they will ask everybody not to go to work anymore. We did that in the time of COVID-19, where people worked from home.

“So I pray, and we all need to pray that this thing de-escalates. If it doesn’t escalate, normally we in Africa, we don’t have any reserves in terms of savings or in terms of… people normally go out and look for money for the next day or even for the same day. If they don’t work that day, they won’t eat. So I think really, we just need all hands on deck to pray that this thing comes to an end.”

The post Dangote meets Tinubu in Lagos, says UK visit will open doors appeared first on Vanguard News.