With the discovery of oil in large quantity in Oloibiri, Bayelsa state in 1956, it has been one crisis of crude supply after the other in Nigeria. Oil has remained the country’s main revenue earner; the reason oil politics has overshadowed everything else with increasing concentration and focus on the product by past and present administrations. Surprisingly, with the country so endowed with oil and other natural resources, the required infrastructure to refine the raw materials has remained elusive, if not a mirage, with empty promises to either build new ones or revamp the ailing infrastructure. The past administration of Muhammadu Buhari promised in 2015 that it was going to resuscitate all the existing moribund refineries if elected into office.
Eight years of his administration, as the President and the Minister of Petroleum, no single drop of oil was refined as the existing four refineries remained moribund until he bowed out of office. Ironically, he hurriedly commissioned Dangote refinery that was yet to be completed at the time he left office. One year after the current administration under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came onboard, none of the four refineries has come alive, even as the nation is faced with crisis in the oil sector. Recently, it was widely reported by the media about the non-supply of crude oil to local refineries and allegations of monopoly and high sulphur petroleum product in the country.
The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri in a statement released recently, also stated that the government is trying to resolve the ongoing impasse surrounding the Dangote Refinery. Dangote and his colleagues in the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil industry have been at daggers drawn concerning the inability of international oil companies to supply crude to the Dangote Refinery. There have also been accusations of importation and local refining of premium motor spirit that is of low quality, according to the authority. Again, another accusation is that the federal government ignored Dangote Refinery in the bid to export and import finished products from Indonesia.
The back and forth of this whole matter appears to have frustrated and overwhelmed the good intentions of the Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, as he has offered to sell his oil refinery to the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Dangote argued, he would sell his refinery since he was labelled a monopolist, with the accusation that the quality of the product from his refinery was substandard compared with the imported variant. While we do not hold brief for the Dangote group, his refinery has become a source of pride for many Nigerians. The idea of selling the refinery should be out of the equation.
The NNPCL does not have the money to acquire the refinery. If it does, why is it impossible to put government owned refineries in working condition? However, in all these, there should be a meeting point between government and other stakeholders in the oil business in resolving the issues. While we understand that monopoly could lead to inefficiencies, higher costs, as well as discourage would-be investors, government should, as a matter of fact, realise that the unsavory development would send wrong signals, and would ultimately scare away investors.
Government should concentrate on policies and programmes that would create a conducive environment to attract investors, rather than dabble into privately driven businesses that have provided hundreds of jobs for Nigerians like the Dangote Refinery. We want to see amicable settlement of this problem in the days ahead. The President who doubles as the Minister of Petroleum should not sit back and watch the hawks in the oil sector scuttle what Nigeria has laboured for years, and please, put a stop to the war of words that may degenerate to something more sinister between the Dangote Group and the NNPCL that has not been able to manage its own refineries!
