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Nigerian business tycoon Aliko Dangote is seeking to raise billions of dollars to step up production at his $20bn oil refinery on the outskirts of Lagos.
The industrialist is in talks with commercial lenders, development banks, oil traders and other industry participants to raise funds for crude supplies to turn into refined products, according to people familiar with the matter.
His company Dangote Industries has bought crude from the US and Brazil, and in July was in talks with African suppliers such as Libya and Angola, according to Devakumar Edwin, a senior executive at the group.
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Africa’s richest man needs to secure more crude to reach the refinery’s capacity of 650,000 barrels per day for a project he has said is a “game changer” for the country.
The billionaire told the Financial Times last month that he expected the refinery to be at capacity by the second quarter of next year, although previous targets have often slipped.
Dangote added that Nigeria’s biggest infrastructure project in decades and the largest of its kind in the world is already producing 420,000 b/d.
He wants to resolve what he describes as an “absurd” situation in which Africa’s biggest oil producer imported all of its refined petroleum products because of a lack of refining capacity.
The plant began producing jet fuel and naphtha at the start of the year and petrol in September, raising hopes that Nigeria could finally end decades of reliance on imported fuel.
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It would cost about $2bn every 90 days to secure a minimum supply of 300,000 b/d, people familiar with the matter say.
Investors have expressed frustration at Dangote’s inability to gain a steady supply of crude, according to one banker involved in the fundraising. Another added that there was also a major concern among potential financiers over exposure to Nigeria’s currency, the naira, which has fallen sharply following two devaluations over the past year.
“The refinery may never make a profit in real terms,” said the second banker. “It was built over-budget and the naira, which is a major currency of future revenue, has devalued massively.”
Dangote last month attended an emergency meeting with President Bola Tinubu and Mele Kyari, head of Nigeria’s state oil company NNPC, to talk about crude supplies.
The billionaire told the FT the meeting was to discuss “the modalities” by which NNPC would supply 365,000 b/d of crude to his plant to be paid for in naira.
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Dangote Industries declined to comment further on the fundraising or the industrialist’s talks with the president.
NNPC did not respond to requests for comment on the fundraising or meeting.
NNPC has a 7.2 per cent stake in the refinery, which was watered down from 20 per cent after it failed to pay the balance of a deal worth $2.7bn. NNPC paid $1bn upfront in cash in 2021 and the other $1.76bn was supposed to be paid for in crude supplies.
Many, including Dangote, have questioned NNPC’s ability to supply the crude the refinery needs because it has sold significant quantities of oil on forward contracts.
Even if NNPC comes through with the crude, Dangote would need another 185,000 b/d, or more than 5mn barrels a month, to meet his target of 550,000 b/d by January and more still once the refinery reaches full capacity.
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The Africa Finance Corporation, a pan-African development lender based in Nigeria that is already an investor in the project, is one of the institutions involved in the talks to raise money.
The AFC led a financing round in December for funds to source the initial capital to get the refinery up and running as a commercial operation.
The AFC declined to comment on the discussions over fundraising.
Dangote plans to use the refinery to meet the country’s entire petrol demand, which he estimates at 30mn-35mn litres a day. Some critics have accused him of seeking to replicate a quasi-monopoly he already enjoys in cement.
Refineries make money on the spread or difference between the price of crude and the money they make on the refined products they produce.
The fans see the games, the crowds, the food and the beer. But behind every World Cup watch party is a team working long before kickoff and well after the final whistle. We go behind the scenes at a beer hall in Brooklyn to see what it takes to serve a room full of soccer fans on game day.
Members of the group Patriot Front ride the subway as a commuter looks on, in Washington, D.C., on July 4.
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Cheney Orr/Reuters
The sight of hundreds of masked men roaming the streets of Washington, D.C., on July Fourth weekend, wearing khakis, blue shirts and uniform patches, was chilling to some of the city’s residents.
For many Americans, it was the first they heard about Patriot Front, a white nationalist organization that was born out of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. A now-viral Reuters photo prompted reflections on the experience of a lone African American woman who was photographed in a Metro subway car, surrounded by white supremacists.
The planned demonstration of force was timed to bring a fringe group of extremists into public view as the nation marked 250 years of its independence. Indeed, the stunt succeeded in earning the group media coverage across mainstream outlets, amplifying its brand and potential to reach new recruits. On this occasion, the members refrained from engaging in violence and property damage, projecting an image of law-abiding, orderly activism.
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But those who are closely familiar with Patriot Front’s history and operations warn: Don’t believe what you see.
“That is not who they are in private,” said Len Kamdang, director of the Criminal Justice Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Although they were on their best behavior [last] weekend, this is a dangerous group that commits acts of violence all over the country.”
Patriot Front’s history of violence and property damage
Kamdang’s organization sued members of Patriot Front for vandalizing a public mural dedicated to the tennis legend and Black activist Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Va., in 2021. Ashe, who was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985, was born in Richmond and his legacy is a continuing source of pride to members of that community.
“A couple of Patriot Front members showed up under cover of night and vandalized the mural,” Kamdang said. “They painted white stencils all over. … They literally tried to whitewash him and they put their symbols of hate all over — their stencils, their slogans. And all the while they were caught on video. And that video leaked using some of the most horrible language that you can imagine.”
In many jurisdictions, law enforcement can seek additional hate crime charges or sentencing enhancements in cases where illegal acts appear to have been motivated by racial bias. But in this case, Kamdang said, Patriot Front members faced no criminal charges and their identities were only revealed when online activists later infiltrated the group and leaked internal records.
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In another civil case, Patriot Front was ordered to pay almost $2.76 million to an African American musician whom they assaulted in Boston in 2022, at another July flash rally they staged. Despite a police detective concluding that the attack “appeared to be more likely than not motivated in whole or in part by Anti-Black bias,” nobody was criminally prosecuted.
Neo-Nazi ideology in patriotic colors
In 2020, Kristofer Goldsmith said that a fellow veteran invited him to partner up on infiltrating Patriot Front. Goldsmith, who later established the Task Force Butler Institute to recruit Army veterans to counter fascist groups through open source online research, was not closely familiar with the group at the time.
“Frankly, when my friend used the term ‘neo-Nazi,’ I thought he was using hyperbole,” Goldsmith said. “It wasn’t until I saw them doing things like debating the merits of national socialism versus fascism versus monarchy that I truly understood that neo-Nazi was not hyperbole, that these people actually praise Hitler. … These people have dedicated their lives to promoting white nationalist, fascist and genocidal ideology.”
Patriot Front’s founder, Thomas Rousseau, was formerly a leader of a group called Vanguard America, which was prominent in planning and a presence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally. That gathering, the largest public white nationalist event in generations, turned fatal when one extremist drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer. Ultimately, Goldsmith said that rally further smeared public perception of the white nationalist movement as violent and un-American — lessons that Rousseau took to heart.
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“Rousseau needed to rebrand Vanguard America,” Goldsmith said. “So he basically stole all of its assets, its digital assets … and made it into Patriot Front and literally painted everything in red, white and blue so that it would be more attractive.”
The group has also shown up at natural disaster sites, namely in Central Texas last summer, ostensibly to assist local residents. Goldsmith said these missions and the group’s outward aesthetic are meant to project an idea of patriotism and service. He said the group maintains a strict code of conduct. Among other things, they do not display swastikas or give Hitler salutes in public.
“The goal of their propaganda, of their public actions like this, is to beat MAGA and conservatives and Republicans into defending them and to saying, ‘I don’t see anything wrong with this group. They clearly love America,’” he said.
Patriot Front described as a “cult” and a “pyramid scheme”
The show of force in D.C. has raised questions about the group’s financing, and whether members’ travel was sponsored by outside individuals or groups. In fact, Goldsmith and Kamdang said that members of Patriot Front appear almost entirely to shoulder the cost of operations and Rousseau’s lifestyle. They said it’s most likely that those who traveled to D.C. had to cover their costs themselves.
“All of them funnel resources to the top,” Kamdang explained about the group’s general financial structure. “In order to be a Patriot Front member, you have to engage in acts of what they call ‘activism.’ And usually what that means is vandalism: putting up banners, spreading the slogans of hate all over the country. And in order to do that, they will have stickers, stencils, branding. All of that has to be approved from the top down, and all of it has to be purchased from the top down. So all the members who do this multiple times a month send cash to Thomas Rousseau for essentially stickers and stencils.”
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Goldsmith said that from his time infiltrating the group, the costs could run up to hundreds of dollars a month per member. Kamdang, who said that attorneys are actively seeking to collect judgment in the settlement over the Arthur Ashe mural, noted that Rousseau appears not to hold any additional paying jobs.
“This seems to be what he’s doing full time,” Kamdang said. “So he appears to be being propped up full time by his members.”
Goldsmith likened the financial operation to a pyramid scheme. But he said even more substantial than the financial investment that Patriot Front members are required to make to retain membership is the control they give up over their time and personal choices.
“I describe it as a cult, not to be offensive, but because it is like Rousseau needs to have complete control of all of his members,” Goldsmith said. “[The group] requires its members to give up all of their lives, all of their relationships. All of their priorities in life need to be focused towards growing the organization or continuing the organization [and] enriching its leadership. So, it’s costly.”
NPR reached out to Patriot Front for comment. The group did not respond by deadline.
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Goldsmith also noted that Rousseau often gives lengthy speeches that members are expected to listen to, via online platforms.
To Kamdang, the publicity that Patriot Front earned through the group’s D.C. stunt presents a danger: It amplified a presentation of the group that was deliberately crafted to make Patriot Front appear orderly and patriotic.
“I think the reason why it got a lot of attention is because Patriot Front was very careful in their language,” he said. “They try to mask their replacement theory, the white supremacy and in ‘Americana’ terms and patriotism. But that is not who these guys are.”
Now-former Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at his primary election night event on June 9 in Blue Hill, Maine. Platner officially dropped out of the race July 10 following rape allegations from a former romantic partner that he denies.
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Graham Platner, Maine’s Democratic nominee for Senate, is officially out of the race.
The Maine Secretary of State said Platner filed the necessary paperwork to withdraw his candidacy two days after he announced he planned to do so following an accusation of rape by a former romantic partner. Platner denies the allegation.
The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to pick Platner’s replacement.
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In his withdrawal notice, Platner said “people are desperate for change” and that’s why they voted “for a new kind of politics” by making him the Democratic nominee. He expressed gratitude for those who supported his campaign and said that he will continue to fight for “the movement we have built together and the future we believe in.”
He ended his notice with a strong statement aligned with the progressive platform.
“F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts.”
Platner announced his plan to withdraw from the race in an 11-minute video he posted to social media on July 8. He said he had no choice but to suspend his campaign, citing it was no longer viable financially.
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“We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function,” he said.
Platner addedthat dropping out was not an admission of guilt. Rather, the decision, he said, is to keep the progressive movement in Maine alive to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November. Platner blamed the “political establishment” for his downfall and argued the goal was to force him out of the race.
“We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me,” he said.
Many powerful Democrats and progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, urged Platner to step down.
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Platner has had to answer to a waterfall of scandals since he launched his Senate bid. Despite those, he ran away with the nomination in the June 9 primary, securing more than 150,000 votes — more than any other Democratic Senate candidate in Maine’s history.
Platner ran on a progressive platform centered on affordability, universal health care and getting corporate money and influence out of politics. During his campaign, he generated an undeniable amount of enthusiasm, something the Maine Democratic Party will have to harness if it hopes to beat Collins in the general election.
Multiple people have already launched campaigns to replace Platner, including former state Sen. Troy Jackson and former CDC official Nirav Shah, who both ran unsuccessful bids for governor.
Platner called on the replacement process to reflect “the Mainers who on June 9 turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.”
“We were asking for real democracy, and we did it the right way. And we won. But now the ball is in the court of the Democratic establishment,” he added.
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The Maine Democratic Party said that it intends to hold a new nominating convention where around 600 delegates will select Platner’s successor. Candidates have until July 15 to declare their intent to seek the nomination and gather signatures from at least 8 of Maine’s 16 counties. Party leadership added they will make the nomination process public and transparent.
