Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, says Nigeria’s government-owned refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna may never work again.
He explained that even though the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) has spent about $18 billion to repair these refineries, none of them are functional.
Dangote made this known while speaking to business leaders from the Global CEO Africa group at the Lagos Business School. They had just toured the new Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lekki.
He shared that his refinery now dedicates over 50% of its production to petrol, compared to just 22% by the government-owned refineries when they were running. His refinery has a massive capacity of 650,000 barrels per day.
Dangote recalled how, in 2007, he and his team had bought the government’s refineries under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. But after Obasanjo left office, President Umar Yar’Adua reversed the sale. The new leadership believed the refineries were sold too cheaply and could be fixed by NNPC.
“We bought them in January 2007 but had to give them back due to the change in government,” Dangote said. “Now, about $18 billion has been spent on those refineries, and they still aren’t working. I honestly doubt they ever will.”
He compared trying to fix the outdated refineries to upgrading a 40-year-old car with modern parts—saying the car’s body won’t handle new technology even if the engine is replaced.
His statement supports former President Obasanjo’s comments from last year. Obasanjo had said that the NNPC had always known it could not run the refineries but still kept spending money on them.
He said international companies like Shell refused to manage the refineries when he asked for help, which was a clear sign they weren’t worth saving.
Obasanjo also revealed that Dangote and others had paid $750 million to buy the refineries, but Yar’Adua cancelled the deal. He warned then that the refineries would fail and might not even sell for $200 million as scrap in the future.
He criticised NNPC’s actions, saying they continued to mislead the public just to keep benefitting from the corruption within the system.
In January, Obasanjo again said over $2 billion had been wasted recently on the same refineries, and they still didn’t work. He pointed out that if the government refineries truly worked, they wouldn’t need to rely on Dangote’s refinery today.
Obasanjo ended with a Yoruba proverb: “When a farmer claims to have planted 200 heaps of yam, but only harvests 100, the remaining 100 are lies.” This, he said, reflects the false promises made about the refineries.
The recent shutdown of the Port Harcourt refinery—just six months after it was reopened—has sparked more calls to privatise all NNPC-run refineries. The Warri refinery also stopped operations a month after the government said it was back to work.
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria and other experts have urged the government to stop wasting funds. They suggest selling off the old refineries, even as scrap, and using the money to support modern modular refineries.
Despite all the money spent over the years, including $1.4 billion for Port Harcourt in 2021, $897 million for Warri, and $586 million for Kaduna, nothing has changed. That same year, N100 billion was spent on maintenance, with N8.33 billion going out every month. Between 2013 and 2017, another $396 million went into Turnaround Maintenance.
Still, the refineries remain idle.
Efforts to get a comment from NNPC failed, as no spokesperson is currently available. Phone numbers listed on the company’s website were unreachable, and messages sent were not answered.
