Official: Dangote Says he will buy Arsenal but…..After Refinery

The media has reported severally that Nigerian billionaire and foremost industrialist Aliko Dangote is interested in buying Arsenal. Whilst some saw this as mere media hype and cheap publicity for the billionaire others saw this as a smoke with fire burning within.

Aliko himself has now come out to publicly announce that he wants to buy Arsenal. He said this during an interview at BBC Hausa channel on radio.

According to Dangote

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“When we get this refinery on track, I will have enough time and enough resources to pay what they are asking for.

“There were a couple of us who were rushing to buy, and we thought with the prices then, the people who were interested in selling were trying to go for a kill,……We backtracked, because we were very busy doing other things, especially our industrialisation.

On the Clubs direction

They are doing well, but they need another strategic direction. They need more direction than the current situation, where they just develop players and sell them.”

Dangote is a long time supporter of Arsenal and claims that he has been supporting the club since the eighties.

You might like to know that American Stan Kroenke is Arsenal’s majority shareholder, owning 66.64% of the club’s parent company Arsenal Holdings plc. Russian-Uzbek Alisher Usmanov owns 29.11% with the remainder of the 62,217 shares held by minority shareholders including former players and the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust, who own three.

Dangote is ranked 67th on the Forbes rich list and has enough money to buy Arsenal if he actually wanted to.

Dangote claims his refinery will be ready by 2017 so Arsenal fans who are looking forward to this will have to wait till about 2018 or 2019 for this to happen. No wonder some skeptics may see this as another media hype.