By Tosin Olatokunbo
Few days after the Group Managing Director, GMD, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC Mele Kyari disclosed the readiness of his management to commence repair of all major refineries across the country, the House Of Representatives has launched investigation that may yet uncovered another scam in the nation’s petroleum sector.
On Wednesday, the nation’s lower house directed a committee to probe close to $400m spent by the government owned corporation as turn-around maintenance cost in the last four years.
The probe will cover three refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna states.
The probe came following unanimous adoption of a motion entitled ‘Call for investigation of the $396.33m allegedly spent in four years on turn around maintenance of the nation’s three refineries.
Experts in the sector believe that huge sum of money spent to revamp the ailing refineries is a waste, particularly when there are no results to show for it.
In fact, the thinking among most Nigerians is that the refineries have become a drained pipe on the nation’s lean resources, and therefore should either be privatized or out-rightly sold off.
Representative Ifeanyi Momah, had on Thursday, called for the probe, alleging that the amount spent on maintenance of the facilities had failed to bring the refineries back to work.
Momah said Nigeria had been living with the “derogatory appellation” of being a major oil producing nation that is heavily reliant on importation of refined petroleum products for its domestic consumption as a result of its low local refining capacity.
He explained that despite the fact that the country has three major refineries with installed capacity to refine 445,000 barrels per day, enough for domestic consumption and export.
He said, “This objective has not been realised owing to a combination of factors, including corruption and inefficiency in the running of the refineries.
The House observes the assertion by the Nigeria National Resource Charter in the report that the NNPC spent a whopping $396.33m between 2013 and 2017 to carry out repair works.
The House also observes the claim that the NNPC spent N276.872bn on operating expenses of the refineries between 2015 and 2018, as well as $36bn on importation of petroleum products between 2013 and 2017,” Momah said during plenary.
The lawmakers said the federal government should consider “divesting a certain percentage of its shareholding in the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries to competent investors under a transparent and fair bidding process,” instead of continuous wastage of taxpayers’ fund on the refineries.
Therefore, the House directed the Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) to conduct an investigative hearing into the maintenance expenses starting from 2013 to date.
The committee is expected to report back within eight weeks.
