Former Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola (SAN), says his administration deliberately lowered the price of land given to the Dangote Group to keep the refinery project in Lagos.
Fashola said the move helped secure what is now the 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote Petroleum Refinery in the Lekki Free Zone. He spoke at the Chartered Institute of Directors (CIoD) Nigeria Women Directors’ Biennial Conference in Lagos, where he delivered a keynote on advancing women’s influence in the boardroom.
According to Fashola, negotiations with Dangote had stalled because the company felt the state’s asking price for the land was too high. Lagos operated a fixed land pricing system at the time, making a discount difficult to justify — until the then Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Olusola Oworu, pushed back.
Oworu argued that securing a $19 billion investment mattered more than insisting on full land value, especially with thousands of undeveloped hectares still available in the Lekki Free Zone. She reasoned that once the refinery took off, it would drive up demand and value for the remaining land.
Fashola said the State Executive Council was persuaded by her argument. “That was a thinking decision. The whole council then looked at me, and I surrendered,” he said.
He used the story to argue that leadership effectiveness should be judged on competence, not gender. “Ineffectiveness is not a gender thing; it is a human thing,” he said.
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Other speakers at the conference, including CIoD Nigeria’s Amina Oyagbola and Adetunji Oyebanji, called for more women to be positioned in board chairmanships and executive roles, not just board seats, stressing that appointments should be based on competence and merit.
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