By Ifeoma Aka

Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the President of Dangote Industries Limited, has pledged to construct a ₦550 million students’ hostel in Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO).

Dangote who made the announcement on Monday in Owerri during a public lecture he delivered at the university on the theme, “Enterprise, Leadership and Service to Humanity” said the gesture was aimed at addressing the institution’s accommodation challenges.

The industrialist also donated ₦25 million to the students through the Student Union Government (SUG) at the event.

According to him, the planned hostel project is expected to ease the shortage of student accommodation on campus and improve the welfare of students.

Addressing the students, the industrialist said Nigerian youths possess enormous innovative capacity and can compete favourably anywhere in the world.

He disclosed that many fresh engineering graduates recruited and trained by the Dangote Refinery and Fertiliser plants had been poached by companies in the Gulf region, where they are treated as expatriates.

“We face significant economic and social challenges, but we also sit on enormous opportunity: a young and energetic population, abundant natural resources, and an entrepreneurial spirit that is unmatched across the continent.

“Entrepreneurship remains one of the strongest tools for transforming challenges into opportunities, noting that when young people are equipped with technical skills, mentorship, and access to capital, they become job creators rather than job seekers.

‘I urge you students to remain innovative, creative, and adaptable, in order to learn and position yourselves to add value to society,” he hinted.

Dangote, who shared the story of his humble beginnings in business, recalled how he started as a distributor of bagged cement and other commodities before expanding into large-scale manufacturing.

He explained that although he initially made money through commodity trading, he later chose to pursue backward integration by producing locally the goods he had previously imported.

According to him, importing finished products into Nigeria amounts to importing poverty, inflation and unemployment,” while exporting raw materials without value addition weakens the economy.

He stressed that manufacturing remains the key to job creation, industrial growth, and national development, noting that industrialisation must begin with local investors, stressing that citizens must take the lead in building their own economy.

“If I refuse to invest in Nigeria and Africa, no foreign investor will be willing to stake his funds here.

“Asian economies were powered by Asians, not foreign investment.

“They are the ones who invested in their countries. They did not wait for foreigners to come and develop their economies,” he stated.(NAN)