Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has set the media buzzing again. No, he has not written another letter to the government in power.
This time around, it was a rare television in which the former President revealed sensationally how the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) rejected a $750m offer by billionaire business tycoon, Aliko Dangote, to manage the Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries way back in 2007.
The former President threw the bombshell during an exclusive interview with Channels Television, on Thursday, where he spoke extensively on the efforts he made, as Nigeria’s President, to restore the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries respectively.
Obasanjo said the NNPC, now rebranded as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), knew that it didn’t have the capacity to run the national refineries yet rejected Dangote’s offer.
He revealed that much as he tried to make the refineries work, including seeking external help to rehabilitate and manage the facilities, all efforts met stiff resistance.
“I asked Shell to come and run it for us and Shell said they wouldn’t,” Obasanjo recalled. “I said, please come and take equity they said no. I said, okay, don’t take equity, come and run it, they said no.
“Later on, I called them. I called the boss of Shell to come and tell me what the problem was and he gave me four or five reasons. He said, first of all, they make a major profit from upstream, not from downstream. He said they run downstream just to keep their head above water.
“Two, our refineries were too small: 60,000 barrels 100,000 barrels and I think 120,000 barrels. He said that at that time, the average refinery was going for 250,000 barrels.
“Three, he said our refineries were not well maintained. Four, he said that there was too much corruption around the activities of our refinery and they would not want to get involved in that.”
According to Obasanjo, after Shell’s refusal, Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, assembled a team and paid $750 million to operate the refineries through a public-private partnership.
“Aliko got a team together and they paid $750m to take part in PPP (Public–Private Partnership) in running the refineries,” Obasanjo continued. “My successor (President Umar Musa Yar’Adua) refunded their money and I went to my successor, I told him what transpired, he said NNPC said they wanted the refinery and they could run it and I said but you know they cannot run it.”
The former president was not done. He patted Dangote Refinery atthe back saying that going by what he has seen so far, he was supremely confident that Dangote will manage his refinery effectively, contrasting it with the government’s inefficiency.
“I was told not too long ago that since that time, more than two billion dollars have been squandered on the refinery and they still will not work,” the former President said.
“If a company like Shell tells me what they told me, I will believe them. If anybody tells you now that it is working, why are they now with Aliko? And Aliko will make his own refinery work; not only make it work, he will make it deliver.”
He concluded the interview session with a Yoruba proverb, likening exaggerated claims about the refineries’ performance to planting 100 heaps of yam but falsely claiming to have planted 200.
“They say after he has harvested 100 heaps of Yam, he will also have 100 heaps of lies. You know what that means,” he said.
