A widely circulated social media post purporting to quote Africa's wealthiest industrialist, Aliko Dangote, as revealing that the Federal Government collects N6,240 in taxes from every bag of cement sold has been conclusively debunked by the Dangote Group. The viral claim is false.
The fabricated quote, which gained significant traction on Facebook and WhatsApp groups earlier this week, read: "Tinubu's government takes 52 kobo from every N1 on cement. That is N6,240 from every bag." The post was designed to appear as a direct statement from the billionaire businessman and was shared thousands of times amid ongoing public frustration over rising building material costs.
However, Dangote Group issued a swift and unambiguous rebuttal. On its official and verified X account, the conglomerate shared a screenshot of the circulating Facebook post with a large, red "FAKE" watermark stamped across the image. The post offered no further commentary, treating the falsification with the brevity typically reserved for demonstrably false information.
Prime Brief Media conducted a thorough review of all official statements, press releases, and media interviews given by Aliko Dangote and senior executives of Dangote Cement Plc over the past six months. There is no record of the industrialist making any such statement regarding a specific 52 percent tax levy on cement revenue attributable to the current administration.
Furthermore, analysis of Nigeria's fiscal framework does not support the specific mathematics or taxation mechanism described in the viral claim. While cement manufacturers are subject to standard corporate income tax, Value Added Tax, and various statutory levies, there is no existing policy that imposes a flat N6,240 per bag government deduction. Cement pricing in Nigeria is influenced by a complex matrix of factors including ex-factory costs, logistics, energy expenses, and market demand, rather than a singular government tax slice as depicted in the false post.
The timing of the viral claim coincided with the announcement that Aliko Dangote was the only Nigerian named to the 2026 TIME100 list of the world's most influential people, a detail that may have been exploited by purveyors of the false narrative to lend unearned credibility to the fabricated quote.
PRIME BRIEF MEDIA VERDICT: FAKE. The statement attributed to Aliko Dangote regarding a N6,240 government tax per bag of cement is entirely fabricated. The claim has been officially disowned by Dangote Group and is unsupported by any verifiable evidence. Readers are advised to disregard the viral post and rely on official communications from the company for accurate information regarding its
