Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has once again declared that Nigeria’s three state-owned refineries—Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna—will never function effectively, regardless of how much is spent on their rehabilitation .
Obasanjo made the remarks during a television interview aired on Saturday night, where he traced the root of the failure to structural inefficiencies, corruption, and a rejected privatization attempt .
Obasanjo revealed that during his administration, Aliko Dangote and other investors paid $750 million to acquire a 51 percent stake in two of the refineries through a public-private partnership .
“I told Aliko to bring the money quickly. They brought the money, and they paid,” Obasanjo said.
However, the deal was later reversed by his successor, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, following intense pressure from NNPC officials who insisted they could run the refineries themselves .
“I went to my successor and told him what transpired. He said NNPC said they wanted the refinery and they could run it. I said, ‘But you know they cannot run it,’” Obasanjo recounted .
He warned at the time that the refineries would eventually be sold as scrap for less than $200 million .
Shell Refused to Operate Refineries Citing Corruption, Small Size
Obasanjo also disclosed that global energy giant Shell rejected his requests to manage the refineries, citing four major reasons: upstream operations are more profitable; Nigeria’s refineries (60,000–100,000 barrels) are too small by global standards (250,000–300,000 barrels); poor maintenance culture; and endemic corruption .
“And these are the things that eat us up,” Obasanjo said .
The former president noted that approximately $16 billion has so far been spent on the refineries—just $4 billion short of the cost of Dangote’s 650,000-barrel refinery .
The House of Representatives has since launched an investigation into the over $18 billion reportedly spent on the rehabilitation of the refineries over two decades .
Meanwhile, NNPC’s current Group CEO, Bayo Ojulari, has admitted that the refineries were running at a “monumental loss” and operating “well below international standards,” making their products commercially uncompetitive compared to the Dangote Refinery .
The NNPC communications office has yet to respond to Obasanjo’s latest claims .
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