Six things to know about the Dangote refinery’s record share sale

Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian industrialist, sounded the closing gong on the trading floor of the Nigerian Exchange in Lagos on Monday 14 September 2026 to open the sale of shares in his oil refinery to the public. The Lagos newspaper Vanguard reported that it was the first refinery offered for public subscription in the exchange’s 66-year history. These are the main facts of the offer as they stood when it opened.

1. The terms. The Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals company offered 4.1 billion new ordinary shares at 525 naira each. Reuters reported that the sale aimed to raise about 2.15 trillion naira, or US$1.63 billion, and was slated to be Africa’s biggest initial public offering. The offer was scheduled to run from 14 September to 13 October. A so-called greenshoe option allowed the company to sell up to 30% more shares if demand exceeded the amount on offer. The minimum subscription was 10 shares, costing 5,250 naira, according to Vanguard.

2. The valuation. At the offer price and with the share count enlarged to 124.23 billion, the refinery was valued at about 65.22 trillion naira. Converted into dollars, estimates ranged from roughly $47 billion to $49 billion depending on the exchange rate used, according to calculations by the news services Billionaires.Africa and Ecofin Agency. The public was being offered about 3.3% of the enlarged company.

3. The plant. The refinery began operating in 2024 on the outskirts of Lagos and cost about $20 billion to build, Reuters reported. It has a capacity of 700,000 barrels a day. The agency said it had reshaped Nigeria’s fuel market and benefited from supply disruptions linked to the Iran war, exporting jet fuel across Africa and into Europe. The prospectus showed an after-tax profit of $1.82 billion for the first half of 2026, compared with a loss of $476 million for the whole of 2025.

4. The expansion. The prospectus disclosed a plan to spend $14.3 billion to double processing capacity to 1.4 million barrels a day, with the work due to be complete by 2029. Dangote said at the signing of the offer documents on 7 September that although the refinery had profited from the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, its investments would be sustainable over the long term, according to Reuters.

5. The intended buyers. The company pitched the sale at ordinary savers. “The intent is very much the people’s IPO,” the refinery’s chief executive, David Bird, told Reuters, saying the aim was to let Nigerians, the Nigerian diaspora and Africans more broadly take part. The newspaper Leadership reported a target of about 10 million Nigerian investors. Ecofin Agency pointed out that this would exceed the roughly six million accounts registered at Nigeria’s central securities depository. It also reported that the country’s pension regulator had granted fund managers a one-off waiver from a rule on profitability and dividend history so that they could take part.

6. The earlier sale and the regulator. The public offer followed a private placement in July in which about 6% of the refinery was sold for $2.5 billion to institutional investors, implying a value of around $41.7 billion, Billionaires.Africa and Ecofin Agency reported. The placement was 3.7 times oversubscribed. Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission approved the public offer at 525 naira a share in early September. Billionaires.Africa calculated that Dangote’s own holding of 92.3% would fall to about 89.25% once the new shares were issued.

Several questions remained open when the books opened. Ecofin Agency noted on 8 September that the signed prospectus had not yet been made publicly available, and that only a small fraction of the company’s shares would be free to trade. The level of demand, the final allocation and the first day of trading were all still to come: the offer was due to close on 13 October 2026.