The Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Limited, Bayo Ojulari, has described the shutdown of Nigeria’s state owned refineries as the end of an era dominated by contract-driven failure and perpetual turnaround maintenance.
Speaking at the Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES), Ojulari said Nigeria’s refinery problem was never about construction but about operations. “We treated refineries like projects,” he said. “But refineries are businesses.”
Nigeria’s four refineries have undergone multiple rounds of rehabilitation, each involving large engineering, procurement, and construction contracts. Despite this, production remained minimal, and breakdowns were frequent.
Ojulari said the country made a fundamental mistake by separating rehabilitation from long-term operational accountability. “We hired people to build and fix,” he said. “We never hired people to run.” The shutdown, he explained, allows NNPC to break free from this cycle.
“You cannot keep awarding contracts and expect a different outcome,” he said. Before now, refineries operated efficiently through the 1980s and much of the 1990s, but performance declined in the 2000s as institutional focus shifted away from operational excellence toward EPC contracting, O&M structures, and financing-driven interventions.
This transition weakened preventive maintenance culture, increased reliance on turnaround maintenance cycles that proved more commercially attractive to external parties, and contributed to the gradual erosion of in-house operational capacity within NNPC.
According to Ojulari, the new strategy approved by the NNPC board focuses on bringing in experienced global refinery operators as equity partners. “When operators have equity, they care about uptime, efficiency, and margins,” he said. “That is what we need.”
He emphasised that the approach was not privatisation by the back door. “We are not selling Nigeria,” Ojulari said. “We are sharing risk and responsibility.” Ojulari also addressed public criticism, acknowledging the frustration many Nigerians feel. “I understand the anger,” he said.
“But anger does not fix refineries.” He argued that shutting down to restructure was more responsible than continuing to run at a loss. “Halting operations is not weakness,” he said. “It is maturity.” The Dangote Refinery, Ojulari noted, has altered Nigeria’s refining equation.
“It has given us the confidence to stop doing things that don’t work,” he said. For Ojulari, the shutdown represents a decisive shift toward accountability. “This is how you end failure,” he said. “You stop rewarding it.”
