…NNPCL KILLED THE REFINERIES AND DELIBERATELY WASTING MONEY ON REPAIR
Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo has opened up on why the nation’s refineries can not work.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with symfoninews in Abuja, the firmer president said the perpetual claim of fixing the refineries were gimmicks to perpetuate corruption in the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Limited.
According to him, efforts made by his government to fix the refineries failed because corruption in the Corporation had become endemic.
He noted that NNPC is deceiving Nigerians with claims that it can fix the refineries. His words: “When I was President, I called the management of Shell to come and help us run our refineries. I told them to take a certain percentage as equity, but they said no.
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“So, I told them if they don’t want to take equity, they should just come and run it for us, but still, they refused; and, they left. Then I called their Head of Management for a one-on-one discussion and asked why they refused; they gave me reasons.
“First, they said our refineries were too small. They said an ideal refinery should operate at 250,000bpd. At the time Port Harcourt was 60,000bpd, Kaduna was about 100,000bpd, and Warri was 120,000bpd.
“Second, they said even though they run their operation as a service, they don’t run at a loss. That they make substantial profit in the upstream. So if you run the refinery well, you will break even and make profit, and if you don’t run it well, you will run at a loss.
“Thirdly, they said the way we run and service our refineries is not the proper way refineries should be run and serviced, and so, they didn’t want to get involved in that.
“Fourthly, they said they didn’t want to also get involved in the corruption around our refineries.
“When they told me all these, I was completely numb. Then, some Nigerians got together and paid 750million. I said this must be God-sent. But my successor asked me to return it. I ran to him and said to him, look, you know this is not right. He said, well, NNPC said they can do it. I said NNPC cannot do it. The National Assembly is currently investigating $1.5bn that NNPC has spent on refineries since then and still, the refineries are not working. I told my successor that, NNPC, from what I have heard and know, will not work. And when you want to sell it you would not get anybody to buy it at 200million as scrap, and that is the situation we are in right now.
“So, why do we do this type of thing to ourselves? NNPC knew that they couldn’t run the refineries but they were interested in eating and carrying on with the corruption. In a civilised society these people should be in jail. Why do we do this to ourselves? And the same was the case with the story of National Shipping Line, Nigeria Airways…why do we do this to ourselves?” the former president queried.