An X user, Mohammed Jammal with the username @whitenigerian, has posted a claim that Dangote built the biggest refinery in the world, while he built the biggest sports and recreational facility in Nigeria.
The X post was published on December 30, 2024 with a picture collage of Aliko Dangote and Dangote’s refinery in Ibeju Lekki, Lagos atop, and Mohammed Jammal and Monoliza Sport and Recreational Centre in Abuja, FCT beneath.
READ: Nigerian journalist makes false claims over numbers of U.S. refineries
The post reads:
“Dangote built the biggest Refinery in the world. Mohammed Jammal built the biggest sports and recreational center in Nigeria. Add your own below.”
The post has garnered over 300,000 views, with more than 5,000 likes and over 700 reposts plus over 200 comments as of January 5, 2025.
CLAIM 1
Dangote built the biggest refinery in the world.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.
The Dangote Refinery, situated in the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos, Nigeria, is a groundbreaking project aimed at transforming the country’s oil and gas sector. Owned by the Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, the refinery has the capacity to process 650,000 barrels of crude oil daily, though it hits 85 per cent refining capacity in December 2024, few months after launch. It is designed to produce a variety of refined products, including gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel, to meet domestic demand and support exports.
Despite challenges such as construction delays and funding issues, the Dangote refinery was officially inaugurated in May 2023. It is expected to significantly impact Nigeria’s economy by increasing local refining capacity, saving foreign exchange spent on fuel imports, and creating jobs.
When our fact-checker reviewed the ranking capacity of top refineries in the world, Dangote Refinery ranks 7th with 650,000 crude oil processing capacity per day.
Further checks show that Jamnagar Refinery owned by a private company called Reliance Industries located in Gujarat, India is the biggest refinery with 1.4million barrel capacity per day.
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The Dangote refinery is said to be the largest in Africa, overtaking the Skikda refinery in Algeria which has a 565,500-barrel-per-day capacity.
Even though the X user might have made the claim with the intent of comical impression to promote his facilities, but the conversation that arose from the post made FactCheckHub verify the claim.
However, further checks revealed that the Dangote Refinery has the highest single-train refining facility in the world. A single-train refinery operates with a single crude distillation unit (CDU), unlike larger refineries that rely on multiple units to process crude oil into various products. In this setup, the entire refining process is carried out using one integrated distillation unit.
THE VERDICT
The claim that Dangote built the biggest refinery in the world is FALSE, as Dangote Refinery currently ranks 7th largest in the world.
CLAIM 2
Monoliza is the biggest sport and recreational facility in Nigeria.
THE FINDINGS
To verify this claim, our fact-checker checked the facility linked to Mohammed Jamal using a keyword search on Google search engine. The results show that the Monoliza Sports and Recreational Centre, located in Garki Area 11, Abuja, is a sports facility launched on April 24, 2024 and projected to accommodate 600 people at a time. It is one of the biggest privately owned sports facilities in Abuja, but not in Nigeria.
Further checks using a keyword search on Google show that Moshood Abiola Stadium is the largest sports centre in Nigeria with 60,491 spectators capacity.
THE VERDICT
The claim that Monoliza is the biggest sports centre in Nigeria is FALSE, as Moshood Abiola Stadium is the biggest sports facility in the country.
Not true. Dangote Refinery is the largest single train refinery in the world. Each train is like a separate plant. There are refineries in the world which are larger than Dangote’s in a single location but they are multiple plants. For example, Reliance Jamnagar is the largest in a single location but it has multiple trains in a single location (expanded over a period of time by adding additional units).