If after almost six years, Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian president took over the mantle of leadership; he has not been able to fix a single refinery, the best way to describe him is a total failure.
Worse still, Buhari had in 2015 said there is no big deal fixing refineries and ending importation of the refined product.
Criticizing the People Democratic Party (PDP), Buhari in 2015, said Nigeria’s continuous importation of the refined product, shows an apparent lack of capacity and governance deficit in PDP.
However, six years after, Buhari led government has continued with crude importation while all the refineries in Nigeria have continued to remain moribund.
This is even as despite the moribund nature of the refineries, in June this year alone, three refineries took N10.23 billion from the federation account without producing a single drop of oil, a report published by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Thursday has shown.
The NNPC says the three refineries, located in Warri, Port-Harcourt, and Kaduna processed no crude because of the rehabilitation works being carried out on them.
In June 2020, the corporation’s three refineries processed no crude and combined yield efficiency is 0.00% owing largely to on-going rehabilitation works at the refineries.
There was no associated crude plus freight cost for the three refineries since there was no production but operational expenses amounted to ₦10.27 billion. This resulted in an operating deficit of ₦10.23 billion by the refineries, according to the report.
In an analysis breakdown, Warri Refining Petrochemical Company Limited recorded an operating deficit of N2.68 billion; Port-Harcourt Refining Petrochemical Company Limited recorded an operating deficit of N2.76 billion while Kaduna Refining Petrochemical Company Limited recorded the highest operating deficit of N4.79 billion.
The declining operational performance which the group said is “attributable to the ongoing revamping of the refineries is expected to further enhance capacity utilization once completed.”
However, if Buhari stays six months without fixing a single refinery, he is a total failure.
– Audu Liberty Oseni
Coordinator Media Advocacy West Africa Foundation (MAWA-Foundation)
