By Taiwo Adisa
I expected former President Olusegun Obasanjo to fire back at the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) immediately after it announced the revival of the old Port Harcourt refinery on November 26, 2024. In several interviews before that announcement, the former president had emphatically stated that the refineries cannot work anymore. He had backed up his declarations with his experience while in government, which made him decide to sell the carcasses to a team put together by businessman Aliko Dangote at the cost of $750 million. The former President said he had invited Shell to take over the refineries, and the excuses given by the multinational company convinced him that the refineries were as good as dead. His successor, late President Umaru Yar’Adua reversed the sale under pressure from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He refunded the amount paid by the Dangote team. With that decision, Nigeria had to go through seasons of anomie at the petroleum supply front as the refineries completely packed up.
Huge subsidies took over the scene, the NNPC and its cohorts took advantage, contractors fleeced the country of hard-earned money through endless Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) projects and the cycle of mystery expanded to a huge gulf. It was a journey that took nearly 20 years, following the total collapse of the four Nigerian refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna around 2007. It was a journey that practically derailed the Nigerian economy and returned it to a debtor nation after the administration of President Obasanjo had in 2006 redressed that status by securing debt relief and paying off a chunk of the foreign debt. It was equally a journey that stressed Nigerians physically and emotionally, as the citizens went through the excruciating fuel supply crisis with deaths and untold disasters on the tow.
While it would be difficult to put figures to the exact cost Nigeria and Nigerians sustained while the refineries went moribund, it would just be safe to stick by the figures provided by the House of Representatives which said in 2023 that Nigeria had spent $25 billion fixing the refineries in the past 10 years. There were also claims that the process that started in 2021 had gulped about $3 billion. Such funds are aside from the annual salaries, allowances, pensions, and gratuities paid to workers who were left redundant in those refineries and who probably had to earn promotions, and embark on local and foreign training and tours amidst other duties!
At the time death snatched Yar’Adua from the stage, the nation was paying about N200 billion in subsidy. I recall that President Goodluck Jonathan, in 2012 originally budgeted the sum of N280 billion to cover subsidies but when it was obvious that the country would overshoot that figure, former Senate President Bukola Saraki, then a floor member in the senate, raised a motion to task the government on the plan to spend more than the budgeted funds. President Jonathan had earlier that year attempted to end the subsidy regime, which his administration claimed would free at least N1.5 trillion into the public purse. The projection was that infrastructure and social welfare would benefit tremendously, but the political opposition stalled that bid by arranging a series of street protests that engulfed many states.
However, when President Muhammadu Buhari took over on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the same leaders who had branded subsidy payment a scam jumped the bill from what Jonathan projected at N1.5 trillion to about N11 trillion. The NNPC and Buhari not only paid subsidies, but they also embarked on future oil sales as the administration resorted to resource-denominated loans and all manners of shenanigans that mortgaged the crude that was still hundreds of metres below the sea, thus throwing the nation into a huge economic mess. Even when President Bola Tinubu claimed to have removed the subsidy on May 29, 2023, there were reports the nation still paid close to N5 trillion.
So, when NNPCL announced it was breaking the ice of inefficiency by bringing back the 60,000 barrels per day capacity old Port Harcourt refinery, only its officials were excited. It had to arrange visits of different groups to convince Nigerians. In the last days of December 2024, it also announced the return to life of Warri Refinery. Despite that, the words of President Obasanjo that the refineries may never work again continued to haunt the company. I have also been part of tours of the refineries in Port Harcourt between 2012 and 2013, when the then General Managers gave assurances that everything was set to bring back the refineries in 2014. But no one heard anything positive again as power changed hands in 2015. We were only told the government had awarded another TAM in 2021.
It was obvious that officials of the NNPCL have been upbeat since the return of the 60,000 Port Harcourt refinery in November 2024. It was like the hunter who had taken the head of a lion. One the Igbos will call Ogbuagwu. However, the skepticism has continued to grow because the effects are not seen on the streets. The back and forth around the revived Port Harcourt refinery did not also help the cause of the NNPCL. One day, it claimed to have started operations, the following day, the machines were undergoing recalibration, so the long file behind Obasanjo’s affirmation ‘Can anything good come from Nazareth’ was getting longer, and yours truly was one of them.
The former president did not disappoint when he granted an interview last week and doubted the workability of the revived refineries. Obasanjo told his interviewer: “So if anybody tells you now that they (the refineries) are working, why are they not with Aliko (on the streets)? And Aliko will make his own refinery work. Not only make it work, he will make it deliver.
“Whether we announce our own government refineries are working or not working, look, it is like they say in Yoruba adage, ‘the man who plants 100 heaps of yams and says he has planted 200 heaps, they say after he has harvested 100 heaps of yam, he will also harvest 100 heaps of lies.”
The NNPCL has, however, challenged Obasanjo to join it on a tour of the refineries to see the reformation it has been able to effect. The company’s spokesman, Olufemi Soneye, said that the NNPC now has a business model that has made it a profitable organisation.
He said: “We hold President Olusegun Obasanjo in the highest regard as a respected statesman who has made significant contributions to the growth and progress of Nigeria. His dedication to national development and his right to speak on matters of national importance are both deeply respected.
“In response to his recent comments, we would like to respectfully highlight the remarkable transformation of the NNPC. Today, NNPC has evolved into NNPC Limited, a private entity that has transitioned from being a loss-making organisation to becoming a profit-oriented global energy leader.
“Under this new model, NNPC Limited has expanded beyond oil and gas to become an integrated energy company. Our focus is not only on harnessing traditional resources but also on developing cleaner, cheaper, and sustainable energy solutions to meet Nigeria’s growing demands.”
While we wait to see whether President Obasanjo would take up the challenge to embark on a tour of the refineries, the words of the elder statesman will not stop ringing in the ears-a farmer who plants 100 heaps of yam but claims to have planted 200 heaps, will, after harvesting the 100 heaps of yam, also harvest 100 heaps of lies!
The NNPCL, according to Soneye, said it has returned to the path of profitability. But President Bola Tinubu just told the nation weeks ago that he has been meeting his obligations without recourse to the NNPCL and ‘Ways and Means’. So if the NNPCL’s profits are not contributing to the nation’s wealth, where is the evidence of that profitability? Are we not being returned to Obasanjo’s proverbial farmer, who will have to harvest his 100 heaps of lies? Or is NNPCL’s money toxic, or is it like the gifts by Esu Odara in Yoruba tradition, which gives to the adherents with the right hand and takes back in multiples with the left?
Only a move away from the usually opaque operational system of the oil giant, NNPC, with or without the ‘L’ can solve that riddle.
