By MacDonald Dzirutwe
LAGOS, Sept 17 (Reuters) – Several Nigerian digital investment platforms suffered outages as retail investors rushed to buy shares in Dangote Petroleum Refinery, highlighting the strain Africa’s largest-ever share sale is placing on fintech infrastructure.
Regulators and market participants have urged first-time investors to be cautious as the record $1.6 billion offering, launched this week by Aliko Dangote, seeks broad public participation through banks, mobile operators and fintech platforms.
Neither Dangote nor the underwriters have provided any figures for demand for the shares. However, the disruptions point to strong retail investor interest in the offer and illustrate the growing role fintech firms may play in widening access to Nigeria’s capital markets.
When the IPO launched on Monday, Temi Popoola, CEO of NGX Group, said demand was so high that some investment apps crashed.
“I think this particular IPO is stress testing Nigeria’s financial infrastructure across the board. Us fintechs are being tested to take this massive amount of traffic,” Yanmo Omorogbe, co-founder and chief operating officer at one of the largest platforms, Bamboo, told Reuters.
Omorogbe said Bamboo faced outages after traffic on Bamboo’s app surged to 10 times normal levels within 30 minutes of the IPO going live on Monday. The spike also affected some of Bamboo’s third-party service providers, compounding 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 said. “And to be very, very honest, our system broke.”
MILLIONS EXPECTED TO BUY SHARES
Users of other platforms that allow digital share subscriptions, including Cowrywise and InvestNaija, also reported difficulties accessing services and executing transactions.
Oluwayinka Alaje, who runs a small printing shop in Abuja, said his attempt to buy Dangote shares on Bamboo had failed and he was only able to use another app late at night.
InvestNaija directed users to its WhatsApp channel after its platform was overwhelmed.
Bamboo and InvestNaija said their platforms were operating normally by Wednesday. Cowrywise did not respond to requests for comment.
Some stockbrokers, including Chapel Hill Denham, are also using WhatsApp to reach potential investors. Chapel Hill Denham did not respond to a request for comment.
Betting that digital distribution channels will help attract millions of investors, including Nigerians who have never owned shares and those with limited access to traditional banking services, Dangote told local television he expects 10 million people to buy shares in the refinery.
Dangote has marketed it as a “people’s IPO” – an opportunity to share the benefits of his business’s growth, with the minimum investment set at just 10 shares or around $4 – a lower threshold than in previous IPOs.
The refinery, which cost more than $20 billion to build, has emerged as a key supplier of fuel to Europe following disruptions to Middle East exports. It increased fuel exports this year during the crisis, delivering a net profit of $1.82 billion in the first half of 2026 on revenue of more than $13 billion, according to its prospectus.
“ALL SORTS OF SCAMS”
The rush to buy into one of Africa’s most significant industrial projects could create opportunities for fraudsters to target investors through phishing attempts, fake investment websites and impersonation scams designed to exploit the inexperienced.
“Somebody can create all sorts of scams. By the time people know about it, the guys have left town,” said Bismarck Rewane, chief executive of Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Company.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has called on investors to be wary before they transfer funds or provide any personal information. The SEC has not reported any cases of fraud.
Analysts say the risks may be especially acute for first-time investors using mobile applications, where the speed and simplicity of digital transactions can make it harder to distinguish legitimate offers from fraudulent ones.
(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, Additional reporting by Abraham Achirga in Abuja; Editing by David Lewis and Louise Heavens)
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