As the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited continues its search for technical partners to operate the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has once again insisted that the facilities will never work.
Obasanjo spoke during a television interview aired on Saturday night by Sony Irabor Live, which was monitored by our correspondent.
He said, “One of the lessons that I learnt is that PPP (public-private partnership) works. Look, one project that has not been destroyed by the government in Nigeria is the NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas), where the private sector has 51 per cent, and the Nigerian government has 49 per cent.
“See what we did with Nigerian railways. See what we did with the national shipping company. See what we are doing now, even with the NNPC. The NNPC has refineries, and I said to people that it will never work. And a man had the audacity to say, ‘Am I a chemical engineer?”
Obasanjo spoke about his failed efforts to woo Shell, a global energy firm, into running the refineries. “Look, when I was there, I called Shell. I said, ‘Look, please, I beg you, come and take 10 per cent equity and run the refinery for us.’ They said no. I said, ‘Okay, if you don’t want to take equity, don’t take equity. Come and run the refineries. They said no,” he stated.
The former president narrated how he invited a top official of Shell for a one-on-one conversation to know why his offers were turned down.
“So, I called him, and I said, ‘Tell me, be honest with me. Why don’t you want to handle this?’ He said first, they want to let me know that they make most of their profits on the upstream, not the downstream.
