Concerns have been raised over huge funds being spent on Nigeria’s moribund refineries while generating minimal revenues for the nation. At a workshop yesterday tagged: ‘Open data and advocacy in the Nigeria Extractive sector’, Civil Society Organisations (CSO) urged the executive and legislative arms of government to tighten oversight on the operations of the NNPC and its subsidiaries to ensure efficient and profitable service delivery.
The CSOs called for a state of emergency on the nation’s three refineries and a complete overhaul to ensure accountability of their operations. The private sector engagement programme manager at Oxfam, Olumide Ojo, urged Nigerians to awake to the importance of demanding more accountability and transparency from state-owned enterprises.
While presenting the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) policy brief on the audit of the NNPC, Chinedu Bassey advocated the need to improve the capacity of the National Assembly Budget and Research Office and senior aides of the legislators to be able to strategically engage and scrutinize the annual budget of the NNPC and its subsidiaries.
“The nation’s three refineries located in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna as reported by the audited financial report have combined losses of N154 billion despite the over $25 billion spent on turnaround maintenance of these refineries in the last 25 years.
“Kaduna refining and petrochemical company (KRPC) incurred a loss of N64.5 billion, Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) recorded a loss of N45.6 billion, while Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company (WRPC) recorded a loss of N44.4 billion.
“While these are not unexpected considering the near-collapse or moribund nature of these refineries, it is rather disturbing that Kaduna refinery conveniently recorded zero revenue for 2018.
However, more worrisome is the fact that these refineries continued to expend massively in staff remuneration, pre and post-retirement benefits, training among other things despite the redundancy and or unproductiveness of the said staff,” he said.
