While the celebration of the inauguration of the Dangote Refinery has gone wide across the country, several stakeholders in Nigeria have been expressing concerns that any interference by the federal government in the Dangote Refinery, a private sector investment, would deny Nigerians the gains of the products from the refinery in the country, and could impair effective operations of the investment. The stakeholders cited the moribund refineries in the country built by the federal government.
Speaking on TVC Breakfast on Tuesday, monitored by National Daily from Lagos, Ronke Onadeko, Principal Consultant, DPNL Consult Limited, commended the coming on stream of the Dangote Refinery inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari in Lagos on Monday. She articulated the imperatives of full autonomy and non-interference in the refinery by the federal government. Onadeko stated that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is the sole importer of petroleum products into the country, exercising monopoly over petrol importation and controls distribution of the product to marketers. And with that monopoly, she said, the NNPCL has advantage of collecting dollars from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for petrol importation.
Onadeko, therefore, advocated that “the NNPCL should hands off the supply of petrol in the country;” and allow the Dangote refinery, built with US$19 billion to operate as private business. Ronke Onadeko declared: “the federal government has spent billions of naira on local refineries but no result. NNPCL has no accountability mechanism on importation and sales of petroleum products. NNPCL should stay far away from refineries, it made refineries redundant. People should build refineries and enjoy the benefits.”