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Claim
A viral claim spreading across Facebook and X asserts that the producers of Dangote Cement have asked sellers of the product in the country to reduce the cement price from the current price, N5,500 to N2,700—with effect from October 2023.
The claim, which was made by one Dr. Penking on X and Onye Shedrack on Facebook on 23 September 2023 has had 1821 comments, 1678 retweets, and 14900 reactions on X—and a total of 2000 reactions, 1,000 comments, and 653 shares on Facebook—as at the time of collating this report.
ROUNDCHECK analyzed the claim and found the claim to be incorrect
About Dangote Cement
Dangote Cement Plc, a Nigerian cement maker with its corporate office in Lagos, is a publicly traded international company. The business operates plants or import terminals in nine other African nations in addition to Nigeria, where it manufactures, prepares, imports, packages, and distributes cement and related products.
Dangote Cement has a production capacity of 48.6 million metric tons per year across ten countries.
Dangote Cement operates three production plants in Nigeria. The plants are located in Obajana, in Kogi State; Ibese, in Ogun State; and Gboko, in Benue State.
ROUNDCHECK Findings
First, to verify the claim, ROUNDCHECK went through the Dangote Cement website to search for news relating to the price reduction but could not find any news or report in that regard.
In a report published by the Daily Post, Anthony Chiejine, the spokesperson for the Dangote group disclosed that the “news was fake”.
During a visit to a retail outlet of Dangote Cement in Lafia, Nasarawa State, by ROUNDCHECK, a salesperson named Abdullahi, noted that such information had not been communicated to them from the company as he insisted the old price remained at N5,500.
Also, a search through the social media pages of the company did not show a confirmation of the claim.
Are there Cement Price Reduction Plans?
In September 2023, BUA cement company’s Chairman, Abdul Samad Rabiu, after he visited President Bola Tinubu in the Aso Rock, indicated that discussions were ongoing to reduce the price of the company’s cement from the current N5,500 to N3,000 which is a 40% reduction on the price of the product.
During Abdul’s visit, he unveiled plans by the company to reduce the price of cement produced. According to him, the reduction would only take effect after opening two plants with 3 million tons operating capacity to be commissioned at the end of the year.
The producers of BUA Cement, in a social media post, in September announced the company’s reduction of cement price. However, this reduction does not affect the products sold by Dangote Cement as they are two different companies.
Verdict
After analyzing all available records, the claim stating that Dangote Cement was set to reduce the price of the product in October 2023, from N5,500 to N2,700 is INCORRECT as at the time of writing this report.
