Government-owned refineries will never work again, according to former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The elder statesman has always maintained this stance despite criticism.

Three months after taking office, President Bola Tinubu had said the petroleum refinery in Port Harcourt would start production by December 2023.

Expressing optimism, the President had said this would be done after the completion of the rehabilitation contract between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Italian firm, Maire Tecnimont SpA.

But responding in an interview, Obasanjo had said, “Someone told me Tinubu said refineries would work by December. I told the person the refineries would not work. This is based on the information I received from Shell when I was president.

Tope Ajayi, his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, had said Obasanjo was not an engineer, therefore he shouldn’t make such comments.

“Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, with due respect to him, is not an engineer. He’s not the engineer working at the refineries. So, the engineers and the NNPC gave the president a report and they have said that it will work by December this year,” he had said while speaking on Daily Trust space themed: ‘Analysing the First 100 Days of President Tinubu’.

“We still have like four months to go. I will say that with all due respect to the former president, who is an elder statesman and our father, that what he said is his personal opinion and view. I will rather rely on the judgment of the engineers who are working at the refinery. So, I think we should wait until December.”

But speaking on Sony Irabor Live, aired on News Central at the weekend, Obasanjo reiterated his position about the refineries.

“One of the lessons that I learnt is that PPP (public-private partnership) works. Look, one project that has not been destroyed by the government in Nigeria is the NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas), where the private sector has 51 per cent, and the Nigerian government has 49 per cent.”

“See what we did with Nigerian railways. See what we did with the national shipping company. See what we are doing now, even with the NNPC. The NNPC has refineries, and I said to people that it will never work. And a man had the audacity to say, ‘Am I a chemical engineer?”

Obasanjo opened up on how he tried to convince Shell to run the refineries but could not succeed.

He also revealed the outcome of a meeting he had with a Shell official after the deal did not work out as planned.

“When I was there, I called Shell. I said, ‘Look, please, I beg you, come and take 10 per cent equity and run the refinery for us.’ They said no. I said, ‘Okay, if you don’t want to take equity, don’t take equity. Come and run the refineries. They said no,”

“So, I called a top Shell official and I said, ‘Tell me, be honest with me. Why don’t you want to handle this?’ He said first, they want to let me know that they make most of their profits on the upstream, not the downstream.

“Number two: he said our refineries are too small. This was when I was an elected President. He said our refineries are too small. One is 60,000 barrels, and another is 100,000 barrels. He said refineries at that time were in the range of 250,000 barrels to 300,000 barrels. Number three: he said our refineries are not well-maintained. We call quacks and amateurs to come and maintain our refineries. The refineries are not in good order. He said, ‘Number four, there’s too much corruption around our refineries, and they don’t want to be part of that,” Obansanjo explained. (Daily Trust)

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