A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), has said that the nation’s comatose four refineries are dead, and advised against any further investments to revamp them.
He stated such that investment will be unproductive as humongous amount of money spent on their Turn Around Maintenances (TAM) in the past yielded no fruitful result.
Agbakoba, who also is of Centre for Petroleum Governance, Regulatory and Policy Advisor Practise, in an interview with Saturday Telegraph yesterday, called for wise investments of the nation’s resources.
He noted that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) recently, in a statement by its Chief Corporate Communication Officer, Andy Odeh, said that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with two Chinese firms to not only revamp the nation’s ailing refineries, but also to expand them.
The SAN, however, recalled many unfulfilled past promises of reactivating the refineries and emphatically stated that there will be no positive result with the current promise. He said: “No, there will be no positive results.
The refineries are dead. Dangote spent $20 billion to build his refinery, but they spent $26 billion repairing the refineries already, and they are still going to continue. It is that opacity that I have been talking about.
There is no accountability because they have the funds. I do not even know what NNPC Ltd is. Is it a regulator or operator? Who exactly is this NNPC? “So, your question supports my position because the money is with them.
And they are not accountable to the National Assembly. The National Assembly is just sitting there as a toothless bulldog. The National Assembly that ought to control public revenue does not.
It is just sitting there and their money is going under the table. “So when NNPC says that they are going to fix all the refineries, is it not about money?
Where will the money come from if it is not appropriated? They put a big amount of money into the Port Harcourt refinery and after it jerked and jerked, it collapsed. The refineries are dead.”
