The African Shipowners Association has accused the Dangote Petroleum Refinery of sidelining Nigerian shipowners in favour of Angolan vessels for the shipment of crude oil and refined products, citing the country’s weak maritime capacity as the primary reason.
President of the African Shipowners Association (ASA) in Nigeria, Ladi Olubowale, said on Sunday that Nigerian operators lack vessels capable of handling the large cargo sizes required by the refinery, forcing Dangote to rely on Angola’s fleet.
> “Dangote chartered most of the Angolan fleet because they have the right vessels, and we don’t,” Olubowale told The PUNCH. “We don’t have Supermax, Suezmax, or Aframax vessels that can be used. If we had such capacity, it would have been a huge opportunity for local shipowners.
“We are losing a lot of money because the benefits that go to those foreign operators are flowing out of the country. We are not even developing our own capacity. For every trade, there are three elements: the trade itself, the capacity, the currency, and the cargo. We are missing out on all of these.”
Olubowale’s remarks highlight a long-standing concern in Nigeria’s maritime sector: the lack of investment in deep-water vessels capable of competing in the global shipping industry. Industry experts have repeatedly warned that the absence of large-capacity ships means that Nigeria is unable to capture the economic benefits of transporting its own crude and refined products.
He argued that unless urgent steps are taken to build the country’s maritime capacity, major opportunities presented by projects like the Dangote Refinery — Africa’s largest single-train refinery — will continue to be lost to foreign operators.
Meanwhile, the President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has raised fresh concerns about the mounting logistics and regulatory bottlenecks affecting the competitiveness of his $20 billion refinery.
Dangote disclosed that port-related charges and other levies have made it more expensive for domestic oil marketers to lift products directly from the refinery’s Lekki facility than to source from offshore storage depots in neighbouring countries such as Togo.
> “Marketers are struggling with multiple charges at both the point of loading and discharge when sourcing products from our refinery,” Dangote said. “These costs don’t apply when they import from offshore terminals like the Lomé Floating Storage Terminal.”
According to Dangote, the bottlenecks contribute to the continued reliance on imports for about 69 per cent of refined petroleum products in Africa, leaving the continent vulnerable to cheap, substandard petroleum imports. Many of these products, he noted, are blended to toxic levels that would not be permitted in Europe or North America.
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