NNPC Refineries Are Beyond Repair, Dangote Laments Waste of $18 Billion
The president of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has delivered a damning verdict on Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, declaring them effectively obsolete and unlikely to function again, despite the staggering $18 billion already sunk into their rehabilitation.
Speaking while hosting the Global CEO Africa delegation at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos, the billionaire industrialist revealed that his decision to build the 650,000-barrel-per-day private refinery was born out of frustration with the government’s mismanagement and policy reversals.
Dangote disclosed that he and a consortium of investors had successfully acquired the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries in early 2007 during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. However, the subsequent administration of the late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua reversed the sale, compelled by what Dangote described as “false optimism” from NNPC officials who claimed the facilities could be revived.
“The refineries were producing just about 22% of PMS at the time. We bought them in January 2007, but after Yar’Adua came in, we were forced to return them,” Dangote recalled. “Since then, they’ve spent $18 billion on those same refineries, and they’re still not working. I seriously doubt they ever will.”
Dangote compared the rehabilitation efforts to fitting a 40-year-old car with the engine of a modern luxury vehicle, an exercise he implied was technically incompatible and economically senseless.
Corroborating Dangote’s revelations, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in a separate interview, said he had warned the Yar’Adua administration that the refineries were beyond redemption. “I told him plainly, NNPC cannot manage the refineries. When you want to sell them again, no one will pay even $200 million for the scrap,” Obasanjo said.
According to Obasanjo, Dangote and his group had paid $750 million for the assets before the government reversed the deal, an action he believes was driven by entrenched corruption within the NNPC.
“They blocked private sector involvement not because they had a better plan, but because corruption thrives in government control. Over $2 billion has been spent in recent years with nothing to show,” the former President said.
He challenged government officials to prove otherwise. “If anyone claims the refineries are now working, why is the nation relying on Dangote’s refinery to meet local demand?”
With Nigeria’s daily fuel needs increasingly dependent on Dangote’s new facility, both industry watchers and citizens are left to question the rationale behind decades of mismanagement, opaque spending, and stubborn resistance to reform in the country’s oil sector.
As the dust settles on yet another round of refinery rehabilitation failures, one thing is clear: Nigeria’s energy future may no longer lie in the hands of its state-owned enterprises.
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NNPC Refineries Are Beyond Repair, Dangote Laments Waste of $18 Billion