Two superlative nouns, pomp and circumstance, were repeatedly used to describe the celebration of the opening of the “repaired” Port Harcourt Refinery by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday. This comes after years of the refinery remaining comatose and billions of naira allegedly spent on repairs going down the drain.
However, a disclosure by Mr Timothy Mgbere, Secretary of the Alesa Community Stakeholders, alleged that the commissioning of the “repaired” Port Harcourt Refinery was a hoax played on Nigerians by the current regime.
According to Mr Timothy, “The products dispatched from the facility on Tuesday were not newly refined but old stock stored for over ten years, and only six trucks were loaded, not the 200 trucks the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) claimed would be loading from the refinery every day.
“The reopening is more of a show than a real milestone, with the loaded products being old stock rather than fresh output from the revived refinery.”
In an article we wrote and shared on social media with readers, we had observed with suspicion the haste with which the Port Harcourt Refinery was “repaired” and the directive for the repair of the other three refineries given to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) by the President. This came after a Northerner, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, spent about $20 billion to build a gigantic refinery in Lagos, the home city of the Nigerian leader.
However, in a swift press statement, the national oil company, NNPC, quickly denied the claims of Mr. Timothy, whom they described as “a self-acclaimed community person,” as “false.”
The company stated that what the “self-acclaimed community person” alleged was untrue, claiming that 70% of the refinery is currently fully functional.
Nevertheless, the conclusion of most people in the country, cutting across all facets of life, is that there is no way the Tinubu regime would bring any succour voluntarily as long as everything depends on the government. Observers note that since he assumed leadership, President Tinubu has brought not relief but agony to most citizens, felt daily by all but the privileged few.
The president’s misrule may be explained—but not excused—by the suspicion that he is controlled from elsewhere outside Nigeria, a notion fueled by his frequent foreign trips.
In any case, given that the money made by the Tinubu regime from the removal of the oil subsidy is not accounted for to ordinary taxpayers, the haste to repair the comatose refineries raises suspicion. If the regime were truly serious about the economy and fast-tracking infrastructural development, the focus should not be on the money-consuming repair of the comatose refineries—which have so far gulped billions of naira—but on the repair of the Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Industry, the Akwa Ibom-based ALSCON (Aluminum Smelter Company of Nigeria), and the many smaller steel companies across the country, such as the Katsina Steel Rolling Company.
These potentially transformative mega-projects have reportedly been commercialized to a few powerful individuals who, according to the administration that sold them, were deemed to have “more” capacity to manage them than the government. Unfortunately, their capacity turned out to be for cannibalizing and abandoning them, thus enriching themselves while making Nigeria poorer.
If the repair of the Port Harcourt Refinery was indeed a scam, as alleged by Mr. Timothy Mgbere, then it was likely designed to serve two purposes, one of which is beyond debate. The purposes are: to pocket (again) billions of naira in the name of refinery repairs and/or to undermine Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s gigantic one-stream, 650,000-barrel-per-day capacity refinery, built at the humongous cost of $20 billion, at the Lekki Free Trade Zone (FTZ), Lagos.
This monumental deceit is perpetrated with the connivance of federal government officials, who prioritize self-service over service to the country. They, in fact, constitute the majority in positions of authority, which is why Nigeria remains developmentally stagnated, with the possibility of regression seeming more likely than the forward progression patriotic compatriots eagerly anticipate.
May God give voters the willpower to reject the greedy, corrupt, and development-averse individuals at the next general elections.
Labaran wrote from Katsina.
