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The Dangote Refinery IPO has revealed a level of retail investor demand that was difficult to see before one of Nigeria’s biggest companies opened its ownership to the public.
Within 30 minutes of the offer opening on September 14, the surge in traffic was already testing the digital platforms handling subscriptions.
Bamboo, one of the platforms handling subscriptions, also experienced downtime as traffic surged beyond the levels its systems had been prepared to handle.
The disruption was an early indication of the scale of demand the IPO had unleashed. But for Bamboo CEO Richmond Bassey, the bigger signal is what that demand says about Nigeria’s retail investor market: the IPO has brought a wave of first-time investors into the market and exposed what he describes as long-ignored pent-up demand.
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The next challenge, Bassey says, is turning that surge into sustained participation.
In this interview with Nairametrics, Bassey discusses what the Dangote Refinery IPO has revealed about Nigeria’s retail investor market, the growing role of fintech platforms in the capital market, and why he believes another major listing is needed within two years.
Nairametrics: The Dangote Refinery IPO was so massive that it caused disruptions across some digital platforms handling subscriptions. What needs to change across the ecosystem to ensure the system can handle future IPOs of this scale?
Richmond Bassey: We need more future IPOs of this scale to happen in Nigeria so the industry can accommodate for large demand in their backend infrastructure, internal processes, and customer support.
If the Dangote IPO had never happened, we simply wouldn’t know that this level of retail demand exists in Nigeria. To keep up the momentum of attracting new people into the stock market, we need another big listing to happen in the next 24 months.
A key change we had to make at Bamboo was scaling our customer support to meet the needs of our growing community, which surged 5,300% from 2024 to end 2025. We grew our customer support from 11 to 68 team members because we simply weren’t able to respond to queries fast enough.
That had negatively impacted the customer experience which we worked very hard to improve. In July, we brought response time to queries down to 1 minute, a metric that we were proud of achieving.
Nairametrics: The IPO brought a new wave of first-time investors into the Nigerian capital market. What have you observed about who these investors are and how they are participating?
Richmond Bassey: We’ve seen that out of our new users who signed up and subscribed to the IPO, more than 43% were first-time investors.
Since we launched Bamboo in 2019, we’ve observed that a key trait of our community is that they want to invest in blue chip companies, such as MTN and the tier 1 banks. Even those who only have the equivalent of $50 to invest will put all their money into blue chips.
We see relatively little appetite for the equivalent of penny stocks. MTN is actually the most traded stock on our platform, followed by GTBank, and Dangote Cement.
So, it makes sense that there was such a large wave of demand to subscribe to the Dangote IPO given it’s a big company, big name and quality asset.
Nairametrics: What does the scale of demand for the Dangote IPO tell us about Nigeria’s retail investor market, and what do you think is driving this level of interest in Dangote?
Richmond Bassey: This IPO clearly shows that retail investing in Nigeria is going mainstream. A wave of first-time investors are being brought into the market thanks to the listing. It reveals that there was a pent-up demand in retail that was long ignored.
The surge in retail activity also comes from the work we’ve done over the last 24 months since our launch on the NGX. From May 2024 to the IPO launch on September 14, we’ve added more than 800,000 accounts to the local stock exchange.
This uptick in activity sparked new conversations among Nigerians about investing, which attracted more people into the market. It’s like a virtuous cycle. When the Dangote IPO launched, it succeeded in getting even more people to invest who had previously sat out for one reason or another.
The level of interest in Dangote shows that Nigerians want to invest in high quality companies. No one is a bigger name in Nigerian, or African, business than Aliko Dangote. After expansion, the Dangote refinery will be one of the largest refineries in the world, making it a once-in-a-lifetime industrial asset that everyone wants a piece of.
There’s also an emotional aspect at play. This is a rare success story as Nigeria has always struggled to refine its crude oil, and I think people want to be a part of it.
Nairametrics: How are fintech and wealthtech platforms changing access to Nigeria’s capital market, and how does that differ from the traditional brokerage model?
Richmond Bassey: Wealthtech platforms are opening up the market just like fintechs/agency banking did for banking. Platforms, like Bamboo, simplify a complicated process. In a matter of minutes, once the account has been cleared with compliance and the CSCS account activated, you can be trading.
Traditional brokerages were indifferent to serving the mass retail market because their customer segment was focused on HNIs and institutions. You see that persistent trend in the data. If you look at the NGX broker data, our average ticket size is N68,300, the smallest among the top brokers.
As more Nigerians start investing via fintechs, the more they trust fintechs to handle their investments. We see that trust growing as long as fintechs maintain a stellar customer experience which at Bamboo is our top priority.
Nairametrics: How sustainable is this level of retail participation beyond a high-profile offering like Dangote, and what would it take to turn this interest into more regular participation in the equities market?
Richmond Bassey: Sustainability of retail investing will depend on having high quality companies to invest in.
Market activity relies on more Nigerian companies seeing the stock market as being an effective alternative to raise funds.
More IPOs and more blue-chip companies will help drive this momentum in retail investing.
Nairametrics: Could the Dangote IPO mark a shift in how Nigerian companies approach retail participation in future public offerings, particularly in terms of using digital platforms to reach investors?
Richmond Bassey: Dangote is a trailblazer and will convince many more Nigerian companies to list on the stock exchange.
Not only is Dangote raising funds with oversubscription of the IPO highly likely, he is also giving a shot in the arm to his brand equity by opening up the refinery to retail shareholders. The humorous memes on social media showed that Nigerians are proud to invest in Dangote.
You cannot buy that type of good will and brand equity. The IPO might even be more valuable for its brand association and salience to Nigerians than the fundraising itself.
Nairametrics: What lessons should regulators, exchanges, financial institutions and fintechs take from the Dangote IPO to build a deeper, more resilient retail capital market in Nigeria?
Richmond Bassey: The biggest lesson from the IPO is that there is huge latent interest in retail investing. Going forward, the industry needs to consider retail investors as a critical part of our capital markets, whereas historically they have not been. Transactions have to be planned with the goal of growing the retail market.
According to the Nigerian SEC, only 5% of Nigerians invest. But there are more than 70 million bank accounts and BVNs. There’s an opportunity to have just as many CSCS accounts. But that will only happen if transactions are centred on retail.
