29-11-2024.

Two superlative adjectives, Pomp and Circumstance, were the adjectives severally used to describe the celebration of the opening of the ‘repaired’ Port Harcourt Refinery by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday, years after it remained comatose, and billions of Naira spent in the name of repair, going down the drain.

But a disclosure by one Mr. Timothy Mgbere, the Secretary of the Alesa Community Stakeholders, alleged that the said commissioning of the ‘repaired’ Port Harcourt Refinery was one big hoax played on Nigerians by the current regime.

According to Mr. Timothy, “The products dispatched from the facility on Tuesday were not newly refined but old stock stored over ten years ago, and only six trucks were loaded, not the 200 trucks the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) claimed would be loading from the refinery everyday.

“The reopening is more of a show than a real milestone, with the loaded products being old stock rather than fresh output from the revived refinery”.

In an article we wrote and shared on the social media with the readers, we had observed with suspicion the haste with which the Port Harcourt refinery was repaired, and the directive for the repair of the other three (refineries) given to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) by the President, after a Northerner, Alhaji Aliko Dangote had spent about $20 billion to build a gigantic refinery in Lagos, the home city of the Nigerian leader.

However, in a swift press statement reaction, the national oil monopolistic company, NNPC, quickly denied the claim of Mr. Timothy “a self acclaimed community person”, as “false”.

The company stated that what the “self acclaimed community person” has claimed was not true, as 70% of the refinery is fully functional at the moment.

But the conclusion most people in the country, cutting across all facets of life, however, is that there is no way the Tinubu regime would bring any succour on these shores voluntarily as long as everything defends on the government. It is observed that since he assumed the mantle of rulership in the country, President Tinubu has never brought relief, but agony to the citizens of the land, which is daily felt by the all but the privileged few in the country. 

The president’s misrule may be explained, not excused, by the fact that he is CONTROLLED from ELSEWHERE outside Nigeria, a suspicion fueled by the constant trips he overtakes to foreign countries.

In any case, given that the money made by the Tinubu regime from the removal of subsidy from oil is NOT explained to the ordinary tax payer, the haste to repair the comatose refineries is very suspicious. If the regime is really serious about the economy and fast tracking infrastructural development in the country, then the best way to go about it is not the money consuming repair of the comatose refineries, which has so far gulped billions of naira, but the repairs of the Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Industry, the Akwa Ibom based ALSCON (Alminium Smelter Company of Nigeria), and the many smaller steel companies that dotted the landscape of the country, such as the Katsina steel Rolling Company.

These country-fortune-changing mega projects are said to have been  ‘COMMERCIALISED to some POWERFUL individuals in the country, who are SAID by the administration that sold them, to have ‘MORE’ capacity to manage them than the government’. Their capacity turned out to be to CANNIBALISE and ABANDONED them, thus enriching themselves, but making Nigeria poorer.

If the repair of the Port Harcourt Refinery was, indeed a scams, as alleged by Mr. Timothy Mgbere, then it was definitely designed to serve two purposes, one of which is beyond debate. The two purposes are to pocket (again) billions of naira in the name of repairs (again) of the refineries and, or to undermine Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s gigantic one-strea-650, 000-barrel-per day capacity Refinery, built at the cost of a humongous amount of $20 billion (US), at the Lekki Free Trade Zone (FTZ), Lagos.

The monumental deceit is therefore, perpetrated with the connivance of federal government officials, who prefer service to themselves over and above service to the country. They, in fact, constitute the majority in the positions of authority which is why Nigeria finds itself developmentally stagnated in one place, with the possibility of backward movement more real than the forward progression patriotic compatriots eagerly look forward to.

May God give the voters the willpower to reject those who are greedy, corrupt and averse to the development of the country, at the next general elections.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.