Today, analysts argue that the same powerful cabals who sabotaged reform efforts in the past are working tirelessly to frustrate the success of the privately-owned Dangote Refinery, despite its potential to end Nigeria’s decades-long reliance on imported petroleum products.
A History of Repeated Mistakes
Obasanjo spoke candidly about how Shell, one of the world’s largest oil companies, rejected offers to run Nigeria’s refineries.
“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, just run it, and they still said no.”
When he pressed further, Shell gave reasons that should have forced Nigeria to rethink its approach. The refineries, they explained, were too small by global standards, poorly maintained, and surrounded by corruption. More importantly, Shell made its profits upstream, not downstream, so running Nigeria’s inefficient refineries made no business sense.
Despite this clear diagnosis, Nigeria persisted on the wrong path. Obasanjo helped broker a $750 million Public-Private Partnership (PPP) deal led by billionaire Aliko Dangote to run the refineries, but his successor abruptly reversed the deal, refunding the money and insisting the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) could manage the plants.
“I told my successor NNPC cannot run it. I was ignored,” Obasanjo said. “Since then, over $2 billion has been wasted on those refineries and they still don’t work.”
Fast Forward to 2025: Same Playbook, New Target
Two decades later, Nigeria finally has a world-class refinery. Dangote’s 650,000-barrel-per-day facility, the largest in Africa, stands ready to supply Nigeria’s domestic fuel needs and potentially export to the region. But old habits die hard.
Industry insiders say the same vested interests that crippled Nigeria’s public refineries are now doing everything possible to stifle the Dangote Refinery. From frustrating crude oil supply agreements, to manipulating regulatory approvals and creating forex barriers for the purchase of crude oil in naira, these interests are determined to keep Nigeria dependent on costly fuel imports, where they reap huge profits through shady middlemen deals.
Despite government pronouncements about supporting local refining, there are repeated delays in enforcing policies that would channel domestic crude to Dangote. Instead, Nigeria continues to export crude oil while spending billions on fuel imports, leaving the refinery to scramble for feedstock in a country that is the continent’s largest crude oil producer.
The Human Cost of Sabotage
The human side of this crisis cannot be ignored. Millions of Nigerians endure fuel scarcity, high transport costs, and rising inflation. Small businesses reliant on diesel generators are shutting down. Commuters pay more as fuel prices skyrocket, despite the promise that local refining would ease these burdens.
The irony is glaring: Nigeria built a mega-refinery to end fuel imports, yet the nation is still spending scarce foreign exchange to import the same products that the Dangote Refinery could supply locally—at a fraction of the cost.
Broken Refineries, Broken Trust
Meanwhile, the government-owned refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna remain mostly dormant despite over $2 billion in so-called rehabilitation efforts. The NNPC claims that the Port Harcourt refinery is about 70% complete and may begin test runs later this year, but Nigerians have heard such promises before—and watched them fall flat.
These state-run facilities, originally designed to make Nigeria energy self-sufficient, have instead become symbols of waste and mismanagement.
Lessons Unlearned
Obasanjo’s warning is as relevant now as it was then. Shell’s rejection was a clear message: Nigeria’s refining sector was broken, and only transparent, competent, and corruption-free management could fix it. Yet the same cabals who profited from the rot are still fighting reforms that would take away their control.
Today’s fight is no longer just about rehabilitating old refineries, it’s about whether Nigeria will allow a homegrown solution like the Dangote Refinery to succeed.
A Nation at the Crossroads
Nigeria faces a stark choice: support the Dangote Refinery and end decades of fuel import dependency, or allow vested interests to drag the nation backward, keeping it in the grip of fuel scarcity, forex losses, and industrial stagnation.
As Obasanjo’s reflections reveal, history has shown what happens when corruption trumps competence. The question now is whether today’s leaders will learn from that history, or allow it to repeat itself yet again.
Until Nigeria faces down its refinery cabals, the cycle of broken plants and fuel imports may never end.
@2025 The Ameh News: All Rights Reserved
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