The governor of Nasarawa State, Mr. Abdullahi Sule, has condemned the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari for spending more than $19 billion in eight years to turnaround the nation’s four refineries without commensurate results.
Speaking on Channels Television, Sule said the process of fixing the country’s refineries was largely mismanaged.
“Just look at how much the President Muhammadu Buhari administration spent on fixing of the refineries. In the eight years, he spent more money than the $19 billion that Dangote spent in building his refinery, which is one and a half times the size of all our three refineries combined.
“Our three refineries today have a total capacity of 450,000 barrels per day. Dangote’s is 650,000 barrels per day. He spent $19 billion. We spent more than $19 billion maintaining these refineries in eight years, yet they have not been maintained,” he said.
The governor said a refinery would usually have up to five components stressing that money was most times released to fix one part, which at the end did not yield any results.
He stated that while the ideal thing would have been to fix one of the refineries, monies released were shared among all the facilities, thereby leading to what he described as “zero work”.
“We have not really managed these things well. The refinery is actually a component for water, crude, and diesel, about five or six different components that constitute a refinery.
“The moment the government says we are going to spend $2 billion this year on the refinery, the $2 billion is spent and as far as the president is concerned, they have given $2 billion.
“Now when it goes to the three refineries that we have in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna, then they say, you now take $700 million, you now take $800 million, by the time they take that, it goes to fix maybe only one component out of the four components that are all bad.”
On the removal f petrol subsidy, the governor said he had always been an advocate of the policy for according to him, there was massive fraud in its implementation.
He recalled that as erstwhile managing director of AP, he had complained over 22 years ago that there was no way Nigeria would consume 30 million litres of petrol per day at the time.
By 2011, he said the consumption moved to 50 million litres per day, and now about 70 million litres, a development he said was impossible.
Sule said the situation was made worse by the fact that only the volume lifted from the depots, and not the actual consumption data, was known by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited.
Sule further said the unavailability of reliable data on Nigeria’s fuel consumption strengthened the argument for subsidy removal.
“NNPC just last week confirmed to us that it is between 65 million litres and 70 million litres. That is what the government is paying. So, I asked the officials of the NNPC, ‘how are you determining this consumption?’
“They said, ‘well, we are determining the consumption by lifting’.
“You are not determining the consumption by actual usage within Nigeria. That is the only way they can do that. If you have a company and have 10 petrol stations and you come and NNPC gives you 10 trucks to take to 10 petrol stations, if you take only five and take the remaining five out of the country, they have no way of confirming this,” he said.
