President of the Africa Development Bank, Akinwunmi Adesina, has cautioned the Bola Tinubu administration to forego pettiness and make room for Dangote Refinery to thrive.

He added that the government’s hostile body language to the refinery sent a wrong signal to potential foreign investors.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Adesina stated that while “pettiness is easy,” investing was “tough,” considering that very few entities, if any at all, could afford to invest $19.5 billion, as Dangote had done, in a country where the economic climate was “fraught with policy uncertainties.”

His remarks follow allegations of monopoly made by the head of Nigeria’s oil regulator, NMDPRA, Farouk Ahmed, who said that Dangote Refinery was seeking to become the exclusive supplier of refined crude products to the nation’s oil marketers.

“How many individuals or companies can do railways? How many can do refineries of the scale of Dangote Refinery?” Mr Adesina said.

Mr Adesina countered the allegations stressing that few entities had the funds and wherewithal to invest $19.5 billion to build a refinery as large as Dangotes’ and that his wanting to be sole fuel supplier in the nation —after investing such enormous amount— was justified and did not equate monopoly.

He added, “No smart investor would make a $19.5 billion investment and want it to be undermined by importers.”

He also said that there was no evidence to label Dangote refinery as “anti-competitive” and questioned whether it had “prevented any other company from setting up refineries?”

According to Mr Adesina, asking Dangote to compete with importers “is not competition.”

“Let the importers set up local refineries and compete by refining in Nigeria. That is fair and justified competition,” Mr Adesina said.

The AfDB president explained that disparaging Dangote in the media would only harm Nigeria’s economy among its international counterparts as it would dissuade foreign investors if they saw how the country was treating its largest investors.

“This whole disparaging of Dangote is uncalled for. It is self-defeating. And it is very bad for Nigeria. Who will want to invest in a country that disparages and undermines its own largest investor?” Mr Adesina noted.