Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has reiterated his desire to buy Arsenal.
The Nigerian billionaire failed in a bid to acquire a stake in the club in 2010 but is now worth nearly eight times as much, at £11.5bn.
Stan Kroenke is the Gunners’ majority shareholder with 66.64 percent of the club’s parent company Arsenal Holdings plc, wile Russian-Uzbek Alisher Usmanov owns 29.11 percent. The remainder of the 62,217 shares are held by minority shareholders.
Dangote, ranked 67th on the Forbes rich list, is worth more than both Kroenke and Usmanov and says the building of an oil refinery in Nigeria will give him the finance to secure a takeover.
“When we get this refinery on track, I will have enough time and enough resources to pay what they are asking for,” he told BBC Hausa.
“There were a couple of us who were rushing to buy [in 2011], and we thought with the prices then, the people who were interested in selling were trying to go for a kill,” Dangote added.
“We backtracked, because we were very busy doing other things, especially our industrialisation.”
Dangote previously claimed boss Arsene Wenger needed to “change his style a bit” with the club “needing a new direction”, despite back-to-back FA Cup triumphs.
And he insists a change in ownership can lead to more success on the pitch.
He added: “They are doing well, but they need another strategic direction. They need more direction than the current situation, where they just develop players and sell them.”