By Adewale Sanyaolu
A former Group Executive Director (GED), Engineering and Technology Directorate, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Mr. Alexander Ogedegbe, has said Company lacks the capacity to run the nation’s refineries.
Ogedegbe stated this in a live interview monitored on Arise Television yesterday.
The former GED said the major deep problem with NNPC is lack of competence with its productive capacity, adding that the technical leadership of the NNPC has gone down considerably in the last 20 years to the point where it cannot take advantage of the facilities it has, which included; the resources as well as the projects. He said those in charge of the nation’s refineries lack the experience and training required to run the facility.
‘‘Check all the refineries today, who are MD’S there. Do they have any experience in running refineries. Are they engineers?. When we were in NNPC, you cannot head any of the subsidiaries if you have not had the basic training/ experience in that sector. Today that is not the case.
In the last five years, the refineries have been shut down, not a single litre of petrol is being refined. And then with all the promises nothing is happening. The $1.5 billion invested in the Port Harcourt refinery about a year ago is not going to produce any litre of petrol in next one year. I am sure of that. The budget is behind schedule. Again, it is a matter of competence and having the right people there,’’.
He disclosed that in 1991, Nigeria was producing 100 per cent of its requirements for petroleum products but got slowed down because of lack of experienced staff, poor funding and maintenance, leading to capacity decrease.
Ogedegbe said the way out was the privatisation of the refineries where government will still have some stake for the sake of having dividends while majority of the shareholding stake goes to the company that will run it.
‘‘Privatisation is not just selling to your friends. Before privatising the refineries, remove subsidies, because nobody will invest and want to sell products at half the price of what Ghana and others are selling at. If subsidy is not removed before privatisation, investors will not make money and will go bankrupt just like government ran it at a loss.
He expressed concern that the refineries have not produced in the last five years but are paying staff several billions of Naira, but no private company can maintain it under such a structure. He maintained that there has been little or no improvement in the area of productivity in the last 20 years not to talk of the producing environment where investment has been stifled over five years ago.
Ogedegbe said as at 2017/2018, the expectation of new investment was about $17 billion but only about three to four per cent of this came into fruition, stating that when there is no investment and productivity what happens is a decline which, he said, is what Nigeria is experiencing at the moment other than the way round.