After watching the video link I received this morning from a friend and a couple google searches, I am left with more questions than answers as to how Dangote refinery got the entire business and government community selling their tall tales of creating 250k jobs--with almost 150k direct jobs! Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5k9q3wPYuo. Even if they are counting the construction workers and every pure water seller and food vendor that sells or sold to any worker on site, that number is still too large to make sense. For the avoidance of any doubt, here are comparable size refineries around the world with the number of direct employees:

Refinery Location capacity # of Jobs

Dangote Refinery Lekki, Nigeria 650,000 bpd 150,000
[url]Jamnagar Refinery[/url] Gujarat, India 1,240,000 bpd 2500
[url]Port Arthur Refinery[/url] Texas, USA 600,250 bpd 1200
[url]Chevron Refinery[/url] California, USA 240,000 bpd 1200
Marathon Refinery Lousiana, USA 539,000 bpd 900

So unless Dangote Refinery plans to hire about 60 people per position, they will be 147.5k positions short of Jamnagar Refinery in India which is the largest refinery in the world and coincidentally almost twice the capacity of Dangote's. No doubt this is a laudable project that will solve the region's dependency on importation of refined petroleum products and will also create employment for the teaming unemployed youth, but to say it will create 250k jobs is at best an exaggeration of facts and figures.

Now to the crux of the matter: To our leaders (Mr. Ambode!--I will always call you out because I believe the key to the puzzle of what ails Nigeria lies in Lagos), Projects such as the Dangote Refinery are grandiose, headline grabbing, photo-worthy and a good thing to be associated with, it will not solve the unemployment problem in Nigeria. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that all the eateries in Lagos put together will employ more people than the Dangote refinery. Capital intensive projects are such because they require less labor, and we need to encourage labor intensive sector of the economy with similar concessions such as the tax break, access to credit and others that were made available to Dangote Refinery. How many people would become self employ and also employers of labor if a percentage of the credit that was made available to Dangote Refinery was made available to the Bakers and Bakeries in Lagos? They will never be able to make their case known to you, because unlike Dangote Refinery they cannot hire a team of management consultants (aka liars) with access to your office and person to make up numbers of possible jobs they can create. Let's encourage SMEs while we are rolling out the red carpet for big businesses!

CarroltonFarms:
After watching the video link I received this morning from a friend and a couple google searches, I am left with more questions than answers as to how Dangote refinery got the entire business and government community selling their tall tales of creating 250k jobs--with almost 150k direct jobs! Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5k9q3wPYuo. Even if they are counting the construction workers and everyone pure water seller and food vendor that sells or sold for to any worker on site, that number is still to large to make sense. For the avoidance of any doubt, here are comparable size refineries around the world with the number of direct employees:

Refinery Location capacity # of Jobs

Dangote Refinery Lekki, Nigeria 650,000 bpd 150,000
[url]Jamnagar Refinery[/url] Gujarat, India 1,240,000 bpd 2500
[url]Port Arthur Refinery[/url] Texas, USA 600,250 bpd 1200
[url]Chevron Refinery[/url] California, USA 240,000 bpd 1200
Marathon Refinery Lousiana, USA 539,000 bpd 900

So unless Dangote Refinery plans to hire about 60 people per position, they will be 147.5k positions short of Jamnagar Refinery in India which is the largest refinery in the world and coincidentally almost twice the capacity of Dangote's. No doubt this is a laudable project that will solve the region's dependency on importation of refined petroleum products and will also create employment for the teaming unemployed youth, but to say it will create 250k jobs is at best an exaggeration of facts and figures.

Now to the crux of the matter: To our leaders (Mr. Ambode!--I will always call you out because I believe the key to the puzzle of what ails Nigeria lies in Lagos), Projects such as the Dangote Refinery are grandiose, headline grabbing, photo-worthy and a good thing to be associated with, it will not solve the unemployment problem in Nigeria. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that all the eateries in Lagos put together will employ more people than the Dangote refinery. Capital intensive projects are such because they require less labor, and we need to encourage labor intensive sector of the economy with similar concessions such as the tax break, access to credit and others that were made available to Dangote Refinery. How many people would become self employ and also employers of labor if a percentage of the credit that was made available to Dangote Refinery was made available to the Bakers and Bakeries in Lagos? They will never be able to make their case known to you, because unlike Dangote Refinery they cannot hire a team of management consultants (aka liars) with access to your office and person to make up numbers of possible jobs they can create. Let's encourage SMEs while we are rolling out the red carpet for big businesses!

Ure not entirely wrong but from an optimistic viewpoint, I believe he's not referring to direct labour alone but indirect jobs as well which includes but not limited to truck drivers from different companies, depots, states, regions n possibly other countries. Motor boys, truck managers. The collaboration with other smaller/retail outlets would see d need for sales boys/girls, attendants, security operatives, brokers, marketers, legal advisers and d list is just endless.

pappy4real:


Ure not entirely wrong but from an optimistic viewpoint, I believe he's not referring to direct labour alone but indirect jobs as well which includes but not limited to truck drivers from different companies, depots, states, regions n possibly other countries. Motor boys, truck managers. The collaboration with other smaller/retail outlets would see d need for sales boys/girls, attendants, security operatives, brokers, marketers, legal advisers and d list is just endless.

I thought so initially, but they are actually touting 150k direct jobs and a combine 250k jobs(direct and indirect). The indirect jobs figure might be closer to the truth than the direct jobs, not because that's actually true in reality but there could be varying degree of latitude to what really counts as an indirect job. While someone would gladly count the security jobs created at the facility, another would want to factor in the number of security jobs that would be lost at the Apapa Tank farms for an actual net security jobs gain or loss.

Then again coming back home to the the point of the write up: The government needs to come up with credit facility--cheap and accessible, for SMEs, fine tune the tax policies on SMEs, create or add employment tax credit--A situation where any business that hires and keeps a new employee on it's payroll for a full fiscal year gets some credit applied to it's tax burden. Also, our SMEs needs to come together and hire lobbying firms to rep them at the corridor of power, the labor union as we know it today in Nigeria is a non starter!

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to the write up.

Ur welcome bro. U got some point but I'd rather we remain optimistic and promote our own,