Dangote Refinery recently hosted a motely crowd of post-graduate students from Harvard Kennedy School. From the United States, they came. Ghana and Nigeria make up their itinerary. They are part of the Nigeria-Ghana TREK 2025. A model of how Harvard moulds the content and character of its students. A model that exposes students to on-site, hands-on experience.
Akin to migrating from the Boardroom (classroom) to the floor (factory, manufacturing plant). This is what Harvard offers and much more. Any wonder why Harvard products are highly sought after globally?
By the way, Harvard is still the most elitist university in the world. The visiting students, a constellation of future global leaders. They cut across all races, many continents. Europeans, Asians, Africans (of course Nigeria was represented) and the Americas.
They came because Dangote Refinery and Aliko Dangote, the hard-boiled entrepreneur behind the world’s largest single train refinery featured in their knowledge menu. The refinery has the capacity of processing 650,000 barrels per day. They did not come to see Ajaokuta Steel, or the revived NNPC refineries. They came not to see how Nigeria performed the ‘feat’ of generating less than 6,000 MW of electricity well over six decades after Independence. No gigantic government project caught their fancy. Not even Nigeria’s much- touted Lagos-Calabar coastal highway with all its wonders and magic. No state government project held an allure of efficiency to them. With all the innovations of Nigerian governors all guzzling billions of naira, none in any part of the country graced the curriculum of Harvard. The same Harvard that has made the Igbo Apprenticeship Scheme (Igba Boi, Igba-Odibo), a stakeholder capitalist model that deliberately encourages mentoring of young or rookie entrepreneurs by established ones with the sole goal of building their entrepreneurial skills and capacity and guiding them into greatness. This scheme has earned a place in the Harvard Business Review, and deservedly so too.
So, the Harvard students came to Dangote Refinery. They were not only wowed by the monstrosity of the project but even much more, by the tenacity of one man who dared the odds, by the efficiency and seamless symmetry between men and machines. Dangote is tackling what many other people thought was impossible.
One of the students, Sheffy Kolade, captured their impression most lucidly. “We came here hoping to learn from what Dangote is doing in the energy sector; but we came here and saw what happens when resource meets with ambition, courage and absolute brilliance.” To the students, the Dangote project is a project for Nigeria, a practical demonstration of how the private sector can help to achieve national ambition.
Another student, Darrow Merton, was thrilled by the energy, courage, confidence, drive and ambition that Dangote exudes. At some moments in life, what is unsaid far outweigh what was said. This visit was one of such moments. What the students did not voice out was far more, in import and essence, than what they muttered. You could tell from their facial expressions that they got more than they bargained for. In Dangote and through Dangote, the students saw Nigeria in a different light. They came to Nigeria and met with an African entrepreneurial outlier with elephantine ambition to better the lives of humanity. In Dangote, they met a mere mortal who is sacrificing his personal comfort for the comfort of others.
Stars don’t struggle to shine. Dangote is a star out of Africa. One of the Africans with huge public relations equity for the continent. Just imagine the PR stunt pulled on behalf of Nigeria by the Harvard students’ visit to his refinery complex. And why not Dangote Refinery. It’s the biggest single infrastructure project in Africa. It sits on a landmass of 2,635 hectares, six times the size of Victoria Island in Lagos. Let’s break it down. By its sheer size, it can accommodate 4,000 football fields. That’s enough to attract tourists of all kinds. Students seeking hands-on and on-site experience; tourists looking for adventure; persons looking for how to turn vision into reality and more. They will find the answer in what Dangote is doing. A Nigerian excelling in what other Nigerians never imagined was possible. An African icon who against a maelstrom of headwinds pulled through a monumental production facility that has become a global wonder. A wonder envisioned in Nigeria, and achieved in Nigeria.
But this is the same Nigeria whose president was projected in the vilest manner in yet another university. In 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari was used as an example of a bad leader during lectures in Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. The lecturer was teaching his students a course on leadership and while talking about bad leadership, he used Buhari as an example of a bad leader. He projected the photo of Buhari on the screen alongside a message that read: “Don’t be like Buhari.” Whether intended as pun or not (after all, Scotland has had her litany of bad leaders) but it speaks volumes of the image of Nigeria in the eyes of the world. Another lecturer in a university in Manchester, United Kingdom, once had as part of examination questions, advance fee fraud (aka 419), as a Nigerian crime and asked the students to discuss it for a module named “Law in a business context”. Never mind that the same UK is still the hub of sleaze and scam, from bank heist to property fraud.
And this is the context in which Nigerians should appreciate the PR value of the ceaseless efforts of Dangote. He helps to rebrand Nigeria as a nation of purpose-driven humans; as an oasis of opportunities and as a place where human capital fuelled by resilience turns resource to result.
In the eyes of the world, Dangote represents a bright spark out of Nigeria. Yet, this is the same Dangote Refinery that some ‘privileged’ Nigerians in positions of authority worked tirelessly to frustrate. Nigeria must rethink the way she treats her citizens, especially private sector players who have over the years rolled up their sleeves to keep creating jobs, adding value to the economy including paying taxes and offering hope to families. Such private sector players are jewels and they should be treasured.
