36 foreign staff, 12 Nigerians sacked from billionaire’s company

The affected employees include 36 expatriates and 12 Nigerians who were disengaged from the group’s headquarters and subsidiary, Dangote Cement Plc.

The sack was explained via a letter written by Chief Executive Officer, Aliko Dangote on Thursday, October 20, 2016, and obtained by Punch.

The letter reads:

“This year has been a very challenging year for us as a business. The unavailability of foreign exchange coupled with an unprecedented hike in the exchange rate has resulted in increased costs across the organization.”

“This called for a proper review and adjustment of our costs across board to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the deployment of our factors of production in a bid to eliminate redundancies that we know exist, which resulted in some tough decisions, which means losing staff, including some of our colleagues.

“On Friday, October 14, 2016, we began the process of staff cutbacks as it is imperative to review our human capital deployment for the required cutbacks that would ensure efficiency and eliminate redundancies in the allocation of human resources.

“This first phase of this exercise involved the cutback of 36 expatriate staff across the Dangote Cement Plc and Dangote Industries Limited, and 12 local staff members in Dangote Industries Limited.”

Dangote has led calls for the Nigerian government to sell off national assets in order to bring a swift end to the current recession.

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He however denied having any personal interest in the assets saying that even if they were offered on sale for credit, he wouldn’t buy them.