Jacob Judah in Idaso, Nigeria and David Pilling in London Published September 15 2026 Chukwuka Kosisochukwu sits on an empty bucket beneath the ramshackle entrance to his hardware store on the outskirts of Lagos. For months he has studied the stock market in the hope of spotting an opportunity too good to pass up. He recently learnt that what he was looking for may be on his doorstep.

His store looks on to a highway where heavy lorries emblazoned with the name of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, a mammoth refining and petrochemicals plant down the road, thunder by around the clock. Chukwuka Kosisochukwu’s store looks out on to the highway where Dangote trucks pass by © Jacob Judah/FTAliko Dangote, the multibillionaire industrialist who owns the complex, began selling a small stake on Monday, at roughly the cost of a bottle of Pepsi, or ₦525 ($0.40), per share. It is a price that could see millions of ordinary Nigerians, who can buy in with as few as 10 shares, dabble in the stock market for the first time. “I would rather have a share of Dangote in place of a Pepsi,” said Kosisochukwu, who recently signed up to an online brokerage, allowing him to participate. “This is a big-time opportunity.” He is not alone.

The 700,000 barrel-a-day facility, which began operations two years ago and hit full capacity in February as the Iran war started disrupting energy supplies and sent the crude price soaring, is aiming to raise $1.6bn in the initial public offering. That would value it at $49bn — much more than the $20bn it cost to build. It will be by some distance Africa’s largest-ever IPO and offers Nigeria a once-in-a-generation moment to begin creating a nation of investors and to advertise itself abroad as back in business after years in the economic doldrums, say analysts.

Dangote’s 700,000 barrel-a-day facility began operations two years ago © Benson Ibeabuchi/Bloomberg There is near-universal optimism among brokers in Lagos about the sale, although many are involved in some way in the IPO.“This is a watershed moment,” said Gbadebo Adenrele, an investment banker at United Capital, one of the 26 issuing brokers, adding that the IPO is a chance to deepen Nigeria’s capital market by drawing in new investors.“This IPO will play a significant role in accelerating the development of an investment culture among individuals and families,” he added. Philip Anegbe, head of investment research at stockbroker Cardinal Stone, said anyone working with stocks in Nigeria was being inundated with requests from those eager for information. The firm, which is one of the issuing brokers and has produced research on the IPO, expects Dangote’s share price to rise by roughly 30 per cent over 12 months.

The refining giant hopes its IPO, which follows an oversubscribed private placement that raised $2.5bn for a stake of about 6 per cent, will help finance a push to double capacity to 1.4mn barrels per day by 2028. The plant’s rapid growth has already helped transform Nigeria, which despite being a major oil producer has long imported its refined products, into a critical exporter of diesel and aviation fuel. Dangote himself has referred to the offering as the “People’s IPO”.

He is targeting about 10mn individual investors from when the offer opened on Monday until its close on October 13. Trading in the shares on the Nigerian exchange, the NGX, is expected from mid-November. Dangote built a sprawling conglomerate out of a cement business in northern Nigeria © Benson Ibeabuchi/Bloomberg It helps that many Nigerians see Dangote, whose efforts to build a sprawling conglomerate out of a cement business in northern Nigeria have made him Africa’s richest man, as somebody whose business sense is widely admired. “I trust Dangote in anything to do with business,” said Abdulkadir Abdulkadir, an agricult...