By Bayo Adeolu
Nigeria’s three refineries were shut down almost 25 years ago when Nigeria returned back to democratic government in 1999. The refineries were mostly mismanaged during the military government. It’s operations were also affected by the political crisis from the June 12 election, with sanctions placed on the government and bilateral relations with certain countries who were not satisfied with the military government also affected trade relations between Nigeria and some of her foreign partners.
At the time, the refineries were working but not in full capacity and the workers who were managing the refineries were bringing all sorts of ridiculous bills and strange spare parts with astronomical prices that did not exist. They actually succeeded in turning the turn around maintenance of the refineries into a cash cow and ATM kind of machine where ridiculous invoices were presented to the leadership in the guise of buying spare parts.
The poor maintenance had affected refining capacity and government had to resort to about 40 % importation to meet the short fall. However by the time the government of Olusegun Obasanjo took over in 1999, things had gotten worse and importation had reached about 60% of the total consumption need of Nigeria. This did not mean the refineries were not working or repairable. Indeed, what was needed was probe into how the money meant for turn around maintenance was spent.
The government of President Obasanjo failed to do this and opted for its privatization. The privatization of public enterprises met stiff opposition from opposition parties, economists and public analysts. For many, government ought to have adopted the management option where interested parties would be given the opportunity to manage the institutions for a period of five years, and renewable for another five year period if they performed well. This was the preferred option by the Nigerian Labor Congress.
The institutions were many and some of them were the three refineries, the Nigeria Airways, National Shipping Line, Nigerian Electricity and Power Authority, Textile Mills, Glass Factories etc.
The government sold most of the enterprises outright despite a lot of protest. The three refineries were sold to a Consortium led by Alhaji Aliko Dangote for $750 million, but the arrangement was rejected by President Umar Yar’Adua, who kicked against it saying how can you sell three refineries at such ridiculous price. He then returned the money to Dangote and stopped the sale and transfer.
The surprise was that President Obasanjo, who had championed the indigenization policy of Nigeria when he took over British Petroleum (BP) and made it a Nigerian company through nationalization, had gone back to depend on foreign countries by opting for importation. The people he surrounded himself with brought up the warped up idea that Nigeria couldn’t produce petroleum products.
They also introduced the slogan of correct pricing, claiming because of smuggling across the border this had made petrol scarce and impossible to produce within Nigeria. That the best option was to do strictly importation and shut down the refineries.
Some of these people were children of his friends who were computer literate at the time that he had brought in as advisers to his government. Many knew that importation would get them the access to move money outside Nigeria into private accounts without much scrutiny since they became importers of petroleum products. It was an easier way to launder money outside Nigeria legally.
This eventually led to the congestion at Apapa port. The importation led to all the trailers in Nigeria heading to Lagos where pressure came upon the residents of Apapa and we had trucks parking on the bridges in Lagos, with trailers lining up all the way from Ilupeju to Apapa port. This showed how incompetent we had become as a nation.
What General Gowon had achieved from the mid 1966 to 1975 with the brilliant super permanent secretaries in the civil service, during which Nigeria built two refineries and the third was already coming up and they developed a system of distribution that was very sophisticated. We threw this away and went back to a primitive state and system.
The Kaduna refineries supplied the northern region with petroleum products, Port harcourt supplied the eastern region while Warri supplied western Nigeria and Lagos. Nigeria was already sophisticated in its distribution system with the use of pipelines and this took pressure off the highways and roads.
The era of importation led to the creation of tank farms everywhere and these were even encroaching into residential areas.
The Obasanjo government got it wrong here totally. Clearly, anyone saying a refinery can’t work is wrong, because it is simple engineering. Once you change the necessary parts and pipes and reweld the necessary pipes where replacement are necessary, nothing stops a refinery from working no matter how old. One can criticize the capacity as obsolete, but with all the three Government-owned refineries working and the new privately-owned ones like Dangote and Bua coming up, Nigeria cannot be wrong.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo should commend President Tinubu and accept he made a mistake in his handling of the refineries. He should have realized by now that he was scammed into thinking the refineries were dead. I don’t think it is wise for him to continue to say the refineries can’t work and NNPCL cannot run the refineries. I think that is an insult on the black race, saying we can’t run or manage anything.
The Nigeria Airways Obasanjo privatized had, in the 1970s, became a world class Airline and was taking passengers to over a hundred different countries around the world. If we could do it in the 1970s, how can a former President say we can’t achieve such things today – sixty years after.
Baba Obasanjo should realize that the type of men and women who achieved this feat in the 1970s are still around Nigeria but because you and your friends want to use a particular group that you keep recycling around, you can’t see the possibility of a new Nigeria. There are many people in Nigeria that material things don’t mean anything to. They want to work and be given a chance, but certain people in government circles are not giving many people an opportunity to work for their country and this is forcing more Nigerians to leave the country to foreign countries.
President Tinubu seems to have good ideas, though some of them need fine tuning as they are wrongly implemented. The President needs advisers who really understand how policies should be implemented such that the impact it will have on the people is positive. Where a good policy is implemented wrongly, then it becomes a bad policy.
*Adebayo Adeolu, Bsc Pol Sc, LLB Law is an author and lll Author
