President of the Rivers Entrepreneur and Investors’ Forum, Ibifiri Bobmanuel, has revealed that the Dangote Refinery was to be situated in Rivers state.
Bobmanuel, in a statement on Monday, said huge demands from the Rivers State Government and some local government councils were the reasons the Dangote Petroleum Refinery was moved from the state to Lagos State.
According to him, they did everything possible to stop the movement of the Refinery to Lagos, including writing to the Federal Government.
Part of his statement reads,
The Dangote refinery was to be situated in Rivers State and later they made a U-turn and went to Lagos, and we were very miffed by the whole approach.
“We wrote a couple of letters to the management of the Dangote group. “We went as far as writing to the Federal Government.
When they called for a meeting with us, we went for that meeting. It was discovered that the investment that was meant to be situated in Rivers State, precisely Okrika and Eleme Local Government Areas, they got preliminary land acquisition and agreement and perfected all that.
But the amount of pushback and demands that were from the state government at that time, obviously, left them with no other option but to go and situate the business at a location where they were welcomed.
