Africa's biggest oil refinery opens to public ownership, sparking excitement among retail investors

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote opened his refinery to public ownership Monday with plans to raise $1.6 billion from retail investors across the continent in Africa’s biggest initial public offering, or IPO.

Dangote, Africa's richest man, dubbed the IPO one "for the people” and said he wants everyone to be able to own a share. Retail investors can buy a 10-share bundle in the sprawling Lagos-based refinery for 5,250 naira ($4), the minimum investment. Dangote retains 87% ownership of the refinery, Africa's largest.

The refinery's scale and potential returns, especially at a time when global oil prices have risen following the U.S.-Iran war, have generated excitement among retail investors.

“We are all going to fully share all our prosperity with the people and that is why we call it the people’s IPO,” Dangote said at Monday's launch at the Nigerian Exchange Group in Lagos, flanked by the refinery's officials and associates.

Although the refinery stock won’t be publicly listed in Nigeria until November, its IPO launch resulted in heavy traffic on some of the country’s digital investment platforms, with at least two knocked offline briefly.

“I will be a fool not to partake in it and see how it goes. I am placing a lot of emphasis on his name and on the refinery being the biggest in Africa,” Titi Adetoye, an Abuja-based operations manager who hopes to buy up to 1,000 shares, told The Associated Press.

Nigeria has relied for many decades on foreign refining of its oil due to decrepit state-run refineries, many of which operate below capacity or have remained stagnant for years due to poor maintenance.

But when the $19 billion refinery began production in 2024, it transformed the energy-rich country of more than 210 million people from an importer of refined oil into an exporter.

“It is going to be a game-changing IPO for Nigeria’s markets,” said Mohammed Saidu, head of research and investment analysis at Lagos-based TrustBanc. Saidu said he predicted there would be millions of new investors from the IPO.

The IPO has raised questions about Dangote retaining significant ownership and the refinery's purported valuation after the offering. At $49 billion, the valuation is more than twice what it cost to build it. The refinery's officials have denied that its valuation is inflated.

“It is not something someone can classify as people-driven if you still own 87% of the refinery and there are many ways that narrative breaks down,” Joachim McEbong, a senior West Africa analyst at Control Risks, said.

The IPO also has its skeptics. Abdulkabeer Tijani, a Lagos-based researcher who invests regularly in Nigerian stocks, said that, priced at 525 naira ($0.40) per share, it might already be too expensive.

“(The share price) puts a bigger duty on the refinery, which suggests that to justify an even higher valuation from the roughly 47 trillion naira ($49 billion), the refinery needs to generate very substantial profits and cash flow consistently,” Tijani said.

The Dangote refinery reached its full capacity of 650,000 barrels per day earlier this year. Dangote announced plans last year to increase capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day, a move its officials say will make it the world's largest refinery by surpassing India’s Jamnagar plant.

Dangote has also set out to expand into East Africa, and has proposed building a refinery in Kenya by 2030.

AP’s Africa coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

This version has been corrected to show that the price of 5,250 naira ($4) is for a 10-share bundle, not per share.

Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, forth from Left, participates in the Opening Gong Ceremony of the Dangote Refinery Initial Public Offer at the Nigeria Stock Exchange in Lagos Nigeria, Monday, Sept. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, centre, participates in the Opening Gong Ceremony of the Dangote Refinery Initial Public Offer at the Nigeria Stock Exchange in Lagos Nigeria, Monday, Sept. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, attends the Opening Gong Ceremony of the Dangote Refinery Initial Public Offer at the Nigeria Stock Exchange in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, Sept. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, centre, participates in the Opening Gong Ceremony of the Dangote Refinery Initial Public Offer at the Nigeria Stock Exchange in Lagos Nigeria, Monday, Sept. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

FILE - The Dangote oil refinery sits in Lagos, Nigeria, May 22, 2023. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Nigerian multinational industrial conglomerate Dangote Group's CEO Aliko Dangote during the seventh "Choose France Summit", aiming to attract foreign investors to the country, at the Chateau de Versailles, outside Paris, Monday, May 13, 2024. (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP, File)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The attacks at Polish schools over the past week were “spontaneous acts” driven by the online “glorification of violence,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday.

Three attacks at schools in the Mazovian province in central Poland took place within four days this week, leaving one dead and many wounded, including children.

By Sunday morning, police had detained 117 people across Poland for carrying knives or other dangerous weapons, or for threatening to attack schools or fellow students. Some 64,000 schools were checked.

“We are not dealing with any group organized on a big scale,” Tusk said on Sunday morning, during a crisis meeting with government and security services. “These are very often spontaneous actions inspired by online activity.”

“In the past years and months, we have noted — globally and in Poland — a rise in the fascination with violence.”

Tusk said the acts could be associated with “nihilistic violence,” a term used by authorities to describe acts of violence driven by a nihilistic worldview and misanthropy rather than specific political goals.

In the case of Poland, he said “some of the people detained are active in the ultraright environment." He said authorities have observed intensified online searches of Nazi content as well as of “mass killers who have become idols online.”

Tusk said Poland was facing a “civilizational phenomenon” where kids playing video games, even banal ones, or those interested in crime stories, were getting exposed to more and more violence.

“This is essentially a copycat scenario, something of a long trail of attackers going back to at least 2019, if not decades earlier,” Kacper Rekawek, senior researcher at the International Center for Counterterrorism in The Hague, told the AP. He was referring to Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist who shot and killed 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

Rekawek said that one of the suspects in the latest Polish attacks used the same imagery and esthetics as Tarrant, which means the Polish incidents should be “placed within the confines of essentially terrorist behavior.”

Tusk said police checks at schools across Poland would continue into next week in case kids exposed to the stories of the past attacks might “get stupid and unsafe thoughts” to imitate them.

He said Poland had lots of work to do as a society, with parents and teachers having an especially important role to play in communicating with kids about their experiences online and explaining that “fascination and membership in these online practices can lead to very negative consequences.”

On Wednesday, a 19-year-old student at a vocational school in the Mazovian province attacked fellow students, teachers and passersby with a sharp object, wounding nine people. He was arrested nearby. The following day, a 15-year-old killed a school custodian and wounded two other people in a knife attack at his former school in the same province. On Saturday, a 21-year old woman wounded three at a post-secondary school in Warsaw.

Rumors that the attacks were coordinated and that there would be more on “bloody Friday” were shared in parents’ online groups and by mainstream media. It led to 59 schools preemptively suspending classes on Friday across Poland, the majority in Mazovian province.

Those detained on Friday by the police include a 14-year-old boy from Warsaw who was found in possession of a knife with a concealed blade and 11 firecrackers, and a 16-year old who came to school with a butterfly knife in his backpack, police said.

A police officer and a volunteer firefighter look down the street near a cordoned-off area following an attack on the Vocational School Complex No. 4 in Ostroleka, Poland, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafal Niedzielski)