Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man – with a net worth of $12.4-billion – is redefining philanthropy in his native Nigeria. But the 61-year-old is doing this in a way that will make his bank account even fatter.

Dangote Group, the 30 000-employee multinational industrial conglomerate he founded in 1981, is building a monstrosity of an oil refinery on a 2 500 ha swampland on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. Upon completion in early 2020, the $10-billion facility will process 650 000 bbl of crude to produce about 50-million litres of petrol and 15-million litres of diesel a day. This throughput makes it the largest oil refinery in the world.

Nigeria, with a population of almost 200-million people, consumes 35-million litres of fuel daily, all of which is shipped in from abroad, despite the country being Africa’s largest crude producer. When Dangote’s refinery comes on stream, there won’t be any need to import petrol or diesel, and the surplus it will produce will be exported. So, it will not only save much-needed foreign currency but also earn huge sums of it.

Nigeria has been a major crude producer for decades, but there is absolutely nothing to show for this. Some estimate that the country has produced more than $400-billion worth of the stuff since attaining independence in 1960, but most of these petrodollars have been used to line the pockets of crooked politicians and their conspirators who run oil multinationals or work for the global financial system.

The upshot is that 70% of Nigerians are languishing below the poverty line and the country, whose public debt equated to 15.3% of gross domestic product in 2017, faces a serious lack of electricity supply. Only 59.3% of the population is connected to the national grid. We in Mzansi must thank our lucky stars that Eskom, in partnership with the Department of Energy (DoE), has expanded access to electricity from 34% of households in 1991 to about 90%. In the year to March 2017, an additional 169 722 households were electrified. But this was short of the DoE target of 207 436 households and I see the Guptas’ fingerprints all over this underperformance. Since their lackeys have been chucked out of the State-owned utility, one hopes it won’t be too long before all of us have lights in our homes.

To get a sense of the scale of looting that has been perpetrated in Nigeria, Sani Abacha, the military dictator who served as head of State from 1993 to 1998, spirited away £5-billion. This makes Jacob Zuma’s shenanigans at Nkandla, which cost South African taxpayers R240-million, look like child’s play. If rights organisation Global Witness is to be believed, even former President Goodluck Jonathan was not as clean as his handlers made him out to be.

But for some of the alleged perpetrators, the ghosts of their misdeeds are coming back to haunt them. They include Italian oil and gas multinational Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi and his successor, Paolo Scaroni, as well as several officials from the company and from Anglo-Dutch group Shell, who are standing trial over the two companies’ 2011 purchase of an offshore oil block for $1.3-billion. It is alleged the transaction saw Jonathan and his Oil Minister, Dan Etete, pocket huge bribes.

When the new Dangote refinery is up and running, the absurdity whereby Nigeria exports all its crude and then reimports refined petroleum products, including oil and diesel, will come to an end. This has been a lucrative racket for the middlemen who scheme over import contracts and come up with ways to scam the system, which is distorted by subsidies.

So, how is the new facility a philanthropic endeavour? It will stop the haemorrhaging of Nigeria’s oil wealth by cutting out the scheming middlemen who share the loot with their buddies in government. Then, there might be enough money to build power stations and transmission lines extending to every nook and cranny of the country. These could incentivise the building of factories and other electricity-intensive ventures that will employ scores of people, thus hoisting many out of poverty. Dangote’s is more than just an investment – it is also a way of foiling the machinations of the venal and will surely improve the lot of the population at large.