THE government of Muhammadu Buhari has refused to allow the private sector to take over Nigeria’s badly-managed refineries, mobilising nearly $3 billion instead for the companies it cannot run.

On Wednesday, the government approved $1.4 billion for the rehabilitation of Warri and Kaduna refineries, dedicating $897 million for the former and $586 million for the latter.

Earlier in the year, the government had mobilised $1.5 billion for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery, putting the two investments at $2.9 billion.

Analysts believe that the government of Buhari and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) are wasting money on rehabilitation when it should easily have explored concession and other forms of privatisation.

They say a core investor should have been mobilising funds for the refineries, and not the government, stressing that the Federal Government is being clever by half by refusing to disclose who will run the refineries after the humongous rehabilitation expenditure.

Economist and Senior Lecturer at Lagos Business School (LBS) Bongo Adi told The ICIR that any government with competent people thinking for it would not embark on such a wasteful project at this point in Nigeria’s material existence.

“What Nigerians would have expected from the government was to unbundle the petroleum assets and sell them to the private sector who could take them up for a revamp,” Adi said, noting that the government had proved to be incapable of running the business of refineries.

According to The ICIR analysis, Port Harcourt refinery did not record any revenue in 2019, yet it reported N25.19 billion in expenses. Six directors collected N59.65 million in fees, including the Group Managing Director of NNPC Malam Mele Kyari.

Total salaries and pays received by 675 staff of Port Harcourt refinery between 2017 and 2019 were estimated at N80.57 billion, but revenues received by the company within the period were estimated at only N6.27 billion – implying that the NNPC sought N74.3 billion from outside the refinery to pay staff salaries.

Similarly, Warri refinery generated revenue of N4.429 billion between 2017 and 2019, but it incurred N178.315 billion cumulative loss within the period.

On its part, Kaduna refinery made revenue of N2.278 billion but incurred a loss of N241.527 billion in the same period, exposing the ineptitude of the Federal Government and the NNPC in managing public oil sector assets.

Chairman of Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) told The ICIR that whoever sat down to look at the humongous investments in the refineries in the last 10-15 years would marvel at the amount of money being pumped into them at the moment.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/buharis-govt-ignores-warning-mobilises-nearly-3bn-for-badly-managed-refineries/

Why keep revamping the refineries that won't generate half of what's spent on it? If not that some people are actually looting the money in the process....


We could even budget money to build a better refinery...



You can't say that Buhari isn't corrupt if he's not benefiting from this scam....

Ask yourselves, don't BUA, Dangote, Adenuga and co have interest in refining? Why haven't they attempted to buy those refineries. Only corrupt govt official want them because they can sell to themselves at ridiculous rate.
I advise the FG focus on building a new one the same configuration as Dangote's.

That is what you get when you have a school cert failure as a head

He doesn't listen to anyone

I Love PMB