My biggest fear about the Dangote Refinery

Okay, so if you live in Nigeria, you must have heard Dangote is building a Refinery that will solve all our problems and create so many jobs we will be overwhelmed with the sheer number of jobs. Everyone from the Vice President to the Lagos Governor and the Minister of State for Petroleum have sang the song of the soon coming Messiah Refinery.

And yes because we have foisted messianic expectations on this Refinery, the owners will definitely develop a Messiah complex about it. And it is very hard to monitor and regulate that which you have messiah-ed up. And for me, this is the greatest fear.

You see, refineries generate a lot of gaddem waste. The easiest and cheapest way to get rid of the waste is to release some into the air as soot and the rest into surrounding water bodies. For the Dangote Refinery, the closest is the Atlantic ocean, followed by the Lagos Lagoon. I live in Ajah, not too far away from the Refinery.

My biggest fear is this — CAN WE TRUST ANYONE IN THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE THAT THE HIGHEST STANDARDS OF WASTE DISPOSAL ARE MAINTAINED IN OUR MESSIAH REFINERY OR WILL THEY ALLOW THEM POLLUTE OUR ENVIRONMENT TO OBLIVION?

If you have answers (insider info, etc) you can either comment or engage me on Twitter.