Aliko Dangote, chairman of Dangote Industries Limited, has disclosed that the initial public offering (IPO) of Dangote Petroleum Refinery failed to meet its target of attracting 10 million investors, despite recording strong demand from local and international subscribers.
Speaking at the 25th annual conference of the Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) in Lagos, Dangote said the share offer attracted millions of investors but fell short of the company’s ambition to broaden ownership of the refinery. He attributed the shortfall to the limited time available for the offer and difficulties some prospective investors encountered while trying to participate.
“We cannot tell the figure right away because we have not reported to this, but we’ve gotten an amazing demand from various people,” Dangote said.
He noted that participation in the offer was considerably higher than the number of investors recorded in some previous major public offerings.
“If you look at it, the largest participating shareholders, like here now, was I think GTBank. When they did their own, it was 200,000. Okay, we are talking about millions of people that participated.”
Dangote also compared the response with major international share offerings, including Kenya’s Safaricom and Saudi Aramco.
“Even in Kenya, Safaricom was the largest, less than 900,000. Saudi Aramco worldwide was about five million. So, and I’m sure we are not that far away,” he said.
Explaining why the refinery could not achieve its 10 million investor target, he said: “We didn’t hit the 10 million because of time constraint, and a lot of people, they didn’t know how to access.”
He, however, described the public response as evidence of increasing confidence in investment opportunities within Africa, particularly among individuals who previously kept their savings outside the financial markets.
“But it’s the shared trust of public enterprise that we have today in Africa, and that’s why people are now beginning to remove that money under their mattresses to go and invest.”
The refinery’s IPO, branded as the People’s IPO, offered 4.1 billion ordinary shares at ₦525 each, with a minimum subscription of 10 shares valued at ₦5,250.
The offer opened on September 14, 2026, and was initially scheduled to close on October 13 before being extended to October 27. Before the offer commenced, Dangote had announced plans to attract 10 million retail investors, an ambition aimed at giving more Nigerians and other African investors an opportunity to own shares in the refinery.
Although the final number of successful investors has not been officially confirmed, Reuters reported that more than two million investors subscribed through digital platforms before the offer closed. The IPO also attracted orders worth approximately ₦6.4 trillion from retail and institutional investors, nearly three times its initial target of ₦2.15 trillion.
Dangote had earlier disclosed that applications came from 120 countries, including all 54 African nations. Asked whether the IPO had changed his perception of Africa’s ability to raise capital from within the continent, the billionaire said, “I think yes, it has actually changed. It has changed things dramatically. Things are really changing very fast”.
The share offer represents an effort to expand public participation in one of Africa’s largest industrial investments while strengthening access to capital within the continent.
