“People’s indifference is the best breeding ground for corruption to grow” – Delia Ferreira, Transparency International Chairman.
If a sense of reasoning must prevail on how our rulers direct the affairs in this country, the fraudulently packaged “good news” that the Port-Harcourt refinery has come on stream ought to have been treated with a pinch of salt. Besides, it deserves to be engaged as a topical issue that should catch the interest of President Bola Tinubu if he is indeed committed to the fight against the large-scale fraud that has become the face of the NNPCL. To gloss over the fraudulent act and its perpetrators is to reinforce further the perception that Nigerian leaders are ever culpable in the humongous corruption that has wreaked havoc on the psyche of our nation.
Therefore, the celebrations that attended the announced resuscitation of the moribund Port-Harcourt refinery are immature, going by the available facts, which have not been contradicted by officials of NNPCL, led by Mr. Mele Kyari. And it can be declared that it is not yet Uhuru with our energy sector, as the much-anticipated relief from the exorbitant price and periodic scarcity of petrol remains a distant dream.
T-pain or T-gain—as Nigerians have tagged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s economic policies—would become more debatable when it can be distinctively proven whether Nigerians are to expect more pain from the team of corrupt government officials in charge of NNPCL—only time would tell. The gleeful announcement of the ‘coming on stream of Port-Harcourt refinery’ and the outlandish celebrations of Mr President got me unsettled. They led to interrogation as to whether the NNPCL “leopard” has changed its skin. It is fraudulent for NNPCL to give the impression that the PH refinery has resumed full operations when the ‘resurrection’ claim is a mere public stunt that did not reflect the reality on the ground.
Without fear of contradiction, what has been achieved so far is that only some units of the old refinery have been activated while work at the facility was at a skeletal level. Though some progress has been made, which stands the NNPCL in good stead to announce that they have flagged off something, that is not to say, that they are already producing 1 million, 400,000 barrels daily. That is not the case and that is not true. Such a claim, credited to the Head of Corporate Communications of NNPCL, is fraudulent and has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
There’s little doubt, however, that the Presidency had put NNPC under pressure in the last few months to present a refinery of full functionality to Nigerians, hence the desperation to impress the government and mislead Nigerians. Alas! the game plan is to create an alibi, to continue looting the nation’s resources in the guise of operating a refinery that NNPCL may never allow to function optimally. The celebration at the Port-Harcourt refinery is part of the game plan for hoodwink Nigerians, as usual. The much-celebrated feat, was actually nothing more than the release of an old stock from the storage facility rather than new production. It was heard that they released that stock, loaded six trucks, and televised it to Nigerians that it is the production from the old refinery. This is not true.
Sources close to the Port-Harcourt refinery suggested that for the Federal government to unravel the misery of this refinery production, government must insist on the need for a complete system audit by agencies of the Federal Government to establish the true status of the refinery’s operations. Otherwise, the cesspool of another drainage of resources has been quietly launched to syphon public funds further while those who should call government attention to the pilfering are pretending not to see as they are in connivance with the perpetrators to share the loot.
As it stands, let it be clear that no single product has been moved from the Port Harcourt refinery area into the depot’s product reception area. Some energy experts expressed similar concerns, pointing out the need for greater transparency from the NNPCL.
For Nigerians to have a full understanding of the fraud game that is afoot, this column calls for joint efforts of civil society organisations and the media to collaborate and carry out further investigations to ascertain the true status of that refinery. The investigation should be independent of NNPCL, and access to the refinery should be granted to obtain accurate reports on its operations. The government and NNPCL need to do more to communicate transparently with Nigerians. I pray that Sunday Dare’s office and the Minister of Information collaborate with the NUJ and NGE to address this issue.
*Lanre Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst and Former President, Nigeria and African Union of Journalists (NUJ & AUJ), writes from Abuja
