By Tony Omelebele
After a facility tour of the Dangote Refinery in Lagos over the weekend, a group of civil society organisations, CSOs, resolved to set up a situation room to monitor the compliance of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited, NNPCL, to President Bola Tinubu’s directive that the corporation should sell crude to the world’s largest single train refinery in Naira.
The Crest recalls that the nation had recently woken up to a serious of controversies between the NNPCL and Dangote Refinery, a situation which many Nigerians felt deeply embarrassed the country and sent disturbing signals to foreign investors about the safety of their investments. Cans of worms were freely flipped during the controversies with the Chairman of Dangote Refinery, threatening to sell his controlling shares in the biggest 650bdp world’s largest single train refinery in the world.
At the height of the verbal war, President Bola Tinubu had to intervene, directing the NNPCL to sell crude to the refinery in Naira, an action widely applauded by Nigerians, who believed that some forces were desperately trying to frustrate the project so they could perpetuate fuel importation.
Solomon Adodo, leader of the one of the visiting CSOs, Rise Up for A United Nigeria, whose spoke on behalf of the others, marveled at the gargantuan scope of the refinery and wondered why any agency of government would want to side with importers of petroleum products in order to frustrate the world class facility.
Adodo revealed that the CSOs have agreed to urge the Federal Government to adopt the Dangote Refinery as a national asset as it would break the vicious cycle of fuel importation and save Nigeria precious foreign exchange.
“Having gone round to see this world class project,” Adodo continued, “we are at a loss as to why the government could decide to turn against Nigerians in this manner. But we are not too surprised given our past experiences. Those who are profiting from our collective misfortune will not want the Dangote refinery to work.
“We are ready to defend this facility with everything as civil society organizations. We are not speaking on our behalf but on behalf of all Nigerians and on behalf of our fatherland. It leaves much to be desired how an agency of government with oversight function to guide to grow such a project as this would now be disparaging same project. This is too bad.
“We have seen for ourselves and we have cleared all doubt as to the completion of this refinery and the readiness to supply all our domestic needs. We will expose them all. Anyone who is not ready to ensure Nigerians have a new lease of life must give way.
“Going forward, we are going to set up a situation room to monitor the compliance of the NNPCL with the directive of Mr. President that Dangote Refinery would be supplied with Crude in Naira because we know that the enemies of the people would want to adopt another strategy to sabotage the presidential directive.
“It is a criminal audacity for an agency of government to brazenly disparage a national asset like Dangote Refinery, moreso when government has four refineries and all of them are moribund, how then would you treat a private investor who has committed everything to build a functional refinery much more bigger than all the four owned by government put together.
“Nigerians are not stupid; we all know what is interplaying here. They told us that after removing fuel subsidy, market forces would force the price down. What a fallacy…. Here we are, the forces have only succeeded in pushing the price up. Now, we have a local refinery that will bail us out, yet they don’t want it to operate.”
Adodo didn’t stop there. He declared that the CSOs would mount serious advocacy to make government accede to demands of Nigerians by not granting the sale of crude to Dangote Refinery in Naira but also ensuring that Dangote petroleum products are available at petrol stations across the country.
Welcoming the group, Vice-President, Dangote Industries Limited, Mr. Devakumar Edwin, described Dangote Refinery as a value adding facility as it will stop the exportation of Nigeria’s crude and importation of finished products and wonder why government would be against such a vision for Nigeria.
He reminded the gathering that many African countries are blessed with so many minerals but are not adding value to their economies because they export the minerals raw and import the finished products at high costs. He insisted that the anomalous situation must be corrected.
“This is what Dangote refinery seeks to correct,” we did same in Cement and Sugar sectors where Nigeria was a leading importer of those products and with the coming of Dangote leading the backward integration programme of the government, others came into the sector and together Nigeria now exports cement to other countries.
“What we want to do in Refinery, we have done it other businesses, Nigeria used to be the biggest importer of Sugar, we came in and changed the narrative. We led the backward integration scheme of the federal government, and we now produce sugar locally for domestic consumption and others have joined us. We did same in Cement by opening up production plant and today Nigeria exports cement to other countries.
“In a business no one was interested in investing into, Dangote delved into it, determined to ensure Nigeria no longer imports fuel, invested massively and came up with the world’s largest single train refinery. He said he would not take his money to Dubai or Swiss banks as others are doing, he decided to invest at home and now they are saying he wants to create monopoly.
“We didn’t ask for any favour other than that we want to buy crude to produce, first they said there was no crude, later they said we would have to pay some dollars above the prevailing crude market price. And this is a global market where you can track crude prices anytime. We resorted to buying crude from Brazil and United States. Later they said we should not be announcing the price of the products.
“Even the US that is the leading proponent of free market economy protects its local industries by imposing huge duty on from foreign imports just to protect local industries. This is a man that Saudi Aramco once approached to come and cite his refinery in Saudi Arabia, promising steady supply of crude. Abu Dahbi also invited him to do same on their soil but he rejected insisting he would build at home, now he did that and a facility that is supposed to add value to Nigeria’s economy is being frustrated.”
The Dangote Vice-President said the Company would continue to focus on its business strategy which is to add value to Nigeria economy through investments and job creation for the teeming Nigerian masses. According to him, Nigeria can only consume 45% of the capacity of the refinery while the remaining 55% will be exported and bring into the country foreign exchange needed badly.