Before Dangote found himself in the Cement Industry, the two biggest Cement Companies in the World were Operating small plants – the biggest at that time was about 300,000 MT per annum.

These two Companies were Blue Circle ( UK) and La Farge ( France). They later merged.

They were producing small quantities of Cement in Nigeria and flooding the market with Cement from their other plants around the world, at the same time, they were looking at us eye to eye telling us that they are investors in Nigeria.

Fast forward:— Dangote got involved in the industry and decided to increase the capacity of the plant he bought (Benue Cement) to 2,000,000 MT per annum.

Then he built a new plant from scratch ( Obajana 5,000,000 MT per annum).

The next thing that happened is that all other companies had to follow suit.

Today we have the capacity to export Cement.

The above is a complete Local Investor.

He has seen the opportunity that the Foreigners knew, but was never in their interest, and he took the opportunity.

Secondly, the Same Dangote is building one of the largest Refineries in the world in Nigeria.

He is not Smarter than Shell, Mobil, British Petroleum, Total, Agip, etc.

The issue is that all these foreign companies have been operating in Nigeria for more than 60 yrs and never saw it fit to Build a Refinery ( except a 20,000 or so Refinery in PH by Shell in the 60’s for the same reason as above).

Instead, they prefer to take the crude oil to the refineries around the world, refine it and then sell it back to us. Real reason; they don’t care about you, me, or our Country.

They will rather keep us where they want us.

The only way we can get out of poverty is to empower our own people to prosper and build an economy.

In short, I always say; create 10 to 15 Dangotes and see what will happen in our Country.

We need to empower people and guide them to become what we want, and if any of them is going astray, then seize everything and then reinvest in another.

A system can be put in place to monitor anyone government invests in.

Modalities can be set up to make this succeed.

There is no country in the world that has moved out of poverty by; FDI ( foreign direct investment).

Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc all invested in the people and local capacity.

They Thought Out of The Box and disregarded the Western Bullshit of FDI.

See where they are today.

■ A.A. Joda