Nigeria’s fintech infrastructure came under pressure this week as retail investors rushed to buy into Dangote Petroleum Refinery, with several digital investment platforms experiencing outages as demand surged.
The disruptions came as the refinery opened what is Africa’s largest initial public offering, a $1.6 billion share sale designed to draw millions of Nigerians into the capital market through banks, mobile operators and fintech platforms.
Reuters reported that some investment apps struggled to cope with the rush after the IPO opened on Monday. Temi Popoola, chief executive of NGX Group, said the demand was so high that some investment platforms crashed.
The pressure highlights both the scale of retail interest in the Dangote offering and the growing dependence of Nigeria’s capital market on digital platforms to reach ordinary investors.
“I think this particular IPO is stress testing Nigeria’s financial infrastructure across the board,” Yanmo Omorogbe, co-founder and chief operating officer of Bamboo, one of Nigeria’s largest investment platforms, told Reuters.
Omorogbe said traffic on Bamboo’s app rose to about 10 times its normal level within 30 minutes of the IPO going live on Monday. The surge also affected some of the platform’s third-party service providers, worsening the disruption.
“So you have almost a perfect storm, or should we say an imperfect storm, of massive influx of customers, third-party providers, and then multiple retries, creating even more demand on our system,” Omorogbe told Reuters. “And to be very, very honest, our system broke.”
Millions targeted
The scale of the IPO’s ambition is partly responsible for the pressure on the digital investment ecosystem.
Dangote has said he expects as many as 10 million people to buy shares in the refinery, including Nigerians who have never previously owned shares and people with limited access to traditional banking services.
Reuters reported that users of other platforms offering digital share subscriptions, including Cowrywise and InvestNaija, also experienced difficulties accessing their services or completing transactions.
InvestNaija, whose parent company is Chapel Hill Denham, directed users to its WhatsApp channel after its platform was overwhelmed.
Bamboo and InvestNaija said their platforms were operating normally by Wednesday, Reuters reported. Cowrywise did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The push into digital channels reflects the structure of the offering. Dangote has marketed the refinery listing as a “people’s IPO”, setting the minimum subscription at 10 shares, worth about $4, in an effort to make the offering accessible to a much wider pool of Nigerians than conventional large-scale investments.
The strategy could significantly broaden participation in Nigeria’s capital market, but the early technical problems show the infrastructure challenge that comes with trying to bring millions of new investors into the market at once.
A test beyond the refinery
The Dangote refinery is one of Africa’s largest industrial projects. The facility cost more than $20 billion to build and has become an increasingly important supplier of fuel to Europe amid disruptions to Middle East exports.
The refinery increased fuel exports this year during the Middle East crisis and recorded a net profit of $1.82 billion in the first half of 2026 on revenue of more than $13 billion, according to its IPO prospectus, Reuters reported.
The share sale therefore combines two powerful forces: interest in one of Nigeria’s biggest private industrial assets and a deliberate attempt to bring millions of ordinary Nigerians into equity investing.
But the rush also creates an opening for fraud.
Bismarck Rewane, chief executive of Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Company, warned Reuters that inexperienced investors could become targets of phishing attempts, fake investment websites and impersonation schemes.
“Somebody can create all sorts of scams. By the time people know about it, the guys have left town,” Rewane said.
Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission has warned prospective investors to exercise caution before transferring funds or providing personal information. The regulator has not reported any cases of fraud linked to the IPO.
For investors using mobile applications, the risks can be particularly difficult to navigate. Digital platforms make transactions faster and easier, but that same speed can make it harder for inexperienced investors to distinguish legitimate investment channels from fraudulent ones.
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