Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has explained why he could not buy the English Football club, Arsenal when it was valued at $2 billion.
This is as he added that he no longer intends to purchase the club which value has risen to at approximately $4 billion.
In an interview on Bloomberg TV in New York on Monday, Dangote stated that the opportunity to buy the club has gone explaining that he does not have the excess liquidity to justify spending $4 billion on a football club solely for promotional purposes.
According to Dangote, he will continue to express his love and loyalty to Arsenal as one of their biggest fans. However, he explained that it no longer makes financial sense for him to invest such a significant amount of money in acquiring the club.
“I think that time has passed. The last time when we had this interview, I told you that as soon as I finished the refinery, I’m going to try and buy Arsenal.
“The issue is that you know, everything has gone up. The club is doing very well. Arsenal is doing very well. That time, Arsenal wasn’t doing really well. I think you know, I don’t have that kind of excess liquidity to go and buy a club for $4 billion dollars, so to speak, and use it just as a promotional something.
“What I will do is to continue to be the biggest of Arsenal. I watch their games everyday. I will remain a major supporter of Arsenal. But I think it will make sense today to buy Arsenal,” Dangote said.
In addition, Nigeria’s richest man explained that he had to choose between completing the $20 billion Dangote refinery or spending $2 billion to acquire the football club.
He ultimately decided to focus on finishing the refinery, a legacy project that many believed to be an impossible feat.
While he expressed some regret over not purchasing the club at the time, Dangote emphasized that investing in the refinery was the best possible decision.
“I regret not buying Arsenal before. But my money was needed in completing my projects than buying Arsenal. I would have bought it for $2 billion.
“But I wouldn’t have been able to finish my project. The choices was to either finish my projects or go and buy Arsenal. I think the best decision was to go and complete our refineries which a lot of people didn’t believe it was going to be completed,” Dangote added.
