Two Nigerian investment platforms, Bamboo and Cowrywise, experienced service disruptions on Monday following a surge in traffic from users attempting to subscribe to Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals initial public offering (IPO).
Both platforms confirmed the outages in separate posts on X on Monday.
The disruptions occurred on the first day of the Dangote Refinery’s share sale. The refinery is offering 4.1 billion ordinary shares at N525 per share in an offer scheduled to close on 13 October. The company aims to raise N2.15 trillion, about $1.6 billion.
Higher than expected traffic
In a post on X, Bamboo said the traffic was making it difficult for some users to access its app.
“Hey everyone, we’re getting much higher than expected traffic trying to get into the Dangote IPO, and it’s making it difficult for some users to log into the Bamboo app. We’re working on a fix, and it will be up and running shortly,” the platform said.
Cowrywise also acknowledged the challenge.
“We’re currently seeing more traffic than usual on the Cowrywise app. Our team is already on it and working to get things back to normal. Thanks for your patience, everyone,” it said.
Dangote targets 10 million retail investors
At the signing of the offer documents in Lagos last week, Aliko Dangote, Group Chairman of Dangote Industries, said the refinery plans to add 10 million African retail investors to its shareholder base.
The target investors, he said, include “cooks and drivers to traders and managers,” as part of a push to drive inclusiveness.
The minimum subscription is 10 units, equivalent to N5,250. The offer also includes a greenshoe option, which allows underwriters to sell a further 30 per cent of the shares on offer in the event of oversubscription.
Expansion plans
The Dangote Refinery currently has a processing capacity of 700,000 barrels per day.
The company said it plans to double that capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2030, with proceeds from the IPO earmarked to finance the expansion.
