Time For Nigeria’s Refineries To Start Working

Recently, Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote completed his refinery to the consternation of many. Many uninformed people have been lampooning the industrialist as an unrepentant monopolist whose prime motivation was to fleece unsuspecting Nigerians.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is becoming crystal clear that Aliko Dangote is much more charitable than the hawks in NNPC. It is a painful irony that one man could organize himself to the point of constructing a massive refinery, while Nigeria as a nation cannot put their act together towards making their four refineries working.
More painful is the fact that different administrations like the Buhari and Tinubu administrations, allotted huge chunks of money towards bogus and dubious turn-around maintenance projects to all with seeming claims of resuscitating the four government-owned refineries, with intent to make them work optimally. The Buhari regime has come and gone. We are almost half way through President Tinubu’s administration, the disturbing score card is that all Nigeria’s four refineries are comatose and far from functional.
What crimes have Nigerians committed to deserve such unbridled mis-governance and neglect? Where did we get it all wrong? Does it require rocket science for the engineers of the NNPC to get our four refineries working? How did a single man construct his massive refinery and get it working?
It is disturbing that as Dangote Refinery started reeling out its stock of premium motor spirits, the NNPC turned itself to a monopolistic marketer of the commodity, even to the point of determining the price at which this cherished commodity would be sold.
The NNPC all of a sudden turned bullish and antagonistic even to the point chasing other oil marketers away.
What has gone awry with our values? With the present scenario playing out graphically, Nigerians should be in the know, who our true enemies are. Certainly not Aliko Dangote, who elected to site his massive refinery in Nigeria.
It is apposite and timely for Nigerians to hold our leaders and the NNPC accountable especially after collecting huge sums of money for dubious turn around maintenance projects that seem not to be working.
Perhaps some people need to be burnt at the stake for catharsis to take place in the society. Nigerians need to know why our refineries were working during military regimes. Why are the nation’s four refineries not working during democratic governance?
The resultant effect of the domino effect of the colossal failure of the NNPC is the spiraling prices of consumables that have consigned the masses to a life of abject poverty and perpetual doom. Inasmuch as the unsteady and spiraling regime of fuel prices affect almost everything, all hands should be on deck to ensure that Nigeria’s four refineries located at Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna work such that Aliko Dangote cannot be described erroneously as a monopolist.
Interestingly, a key stakeholder in the oil industry suggested a way out of the Bermuda triangle Nigeria is grappling with. He mooted that the only way the nation’s four refineries can work is to throw them open to private investors. What a colossal waste especially when one considers the massive investment sunk into these refineries.