For the last 20 years, they failed to fix the four Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) refineries. They told us every year that the refineries would work. They organised travels and trips to validate their claims, but the refineries remain without flares.
Today, we have been told again by the one-year-old management team of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Linited (NNPC Ltd) that the refineries will work in 24 months with the Chinese repairers and investors who are yet to take FID.
Here we go again. Our public managers don’t learn from past errors. They always think they are wiser and smarter, thus history is repeated by Man.
With a caveat, we have been told that the petrochemical unit of the Warri refinery will be made viable while the refinery will operate at a loss. That is the red light.
I remain a patriotic doubting citizen of Nigeria if public managers can ever deliver profitable projects to us.
History is my best teacher.
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Please, my fellow Nigerians, how are we going to know the truth about these Chinese repairers and what model of deal? The simple template for transferring public assets to private is by privatisation, or liquidations or concessions. In the cases of refineries, the only transparent way to sell them is by privatisation or liquidation.
By that means, the new owner investors are assured of future probe free ownerships. It is time we continue to remind the leaders in NNPC Ltd that the journey ahead is going to be rough, and more energy and focus should be on attracting investment in upstream oil and gas production.
They should be reminded that nobody does not want the refineries to work for the common good of Nigerians except the leadership of NNPC Ltd in the last 18 years.
I hereby humbly submit my observations from the recent Arise TV reports from the Warri Refinery by Mr Shagari.
Dan Kunle writes from Abuja
