- Safiu Kehinde
Nigerian billionaire and CEO of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has called for an end to health tourism, stressing that Nigerian elites, including him, must stop going abroad for medical reasons.
Dangote made the call at the Bill Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event held in Lagos on Wednesday.
Speaking during discussion panel, the Dangote harped on the need for every Nigerian including the rich to be able to treat themselves in Nigeria when they fall sick.
While recounting his company’s contribution to the economic development of Nigeria, Dangote advocated for the replication of same development in the health sector, citing the local production of drugs as part of steps towards the development.
He also called for partnership with the Bill Gates Foundation in am effort to foster the growth of Nigeria’s health sector .
“While we have done all these successes in business, there is no way we will not be able to do this in health. What we need to do is to make sure that we stop this health tourism and we should now get into producing our own drugs .
“We should now make sure that when we are sick, we don’t have to travel abroad, all of us including me.
“We should now make sure that when we are sick, we don’t have to travel abroad, all of us, but we need to do a partnership with Bill (Gates).” he said.
Speaking on his contribution to the country’s economy, Dangote highlighted several accomplishment which has elevated Nigeria’s economic status, ranging from trading sector to the oil and gas sector.
“In terms of business, we have done quite a lot by reversing a lot of things. Nigeria used to be the second largest importer of cement in the world. And now we have reversed it.
“Nigeria now exports cement more than any other African country. We also looked at challenge in terms o fertilizer where farmers were suffering.
“We built from the zero level to the second largest plant of fertilizer in the world. So Nigeria now, not only we export, we export more than 37 percent of our fertilizers to the United States of America.” He said.
On petroleum, Dangote revealed the construction of the 650,000bpd refinery to set new record of the biggest refinery in the world.
He further disclosed that in the month of May 2025 alone, the Dangote Refinery exported 400,000 metric tons of petrol.
This, according to him, has ended Nigeria’s dependency on imported petrol, as the country no longer imports the product.