Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has again cast doubt on Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, declaring that the facilities may never function effectively again despite ongoing efforts to revive them.
Politics Nigeria reports that he made the remarks at a televised interview aired on Sony Irabor Live on Saturday night.
His comments come at a time when the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited is searching for technical partners to manage the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries.
Obasanjo said past experience has shown that government-run projects in Nigeria often struggle, while partnerships with the private sector tend to succeed. He pointed to the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas as a working model.
He said, “One of the lessons that I learnt is that PPP (public-private partnership) works. Look, one project that has not been destroyed by the government in Nigeria is the NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas), where the private sector has 51 per cent, and the Nigerian government has 49 per cent.”
The former president maintained that repeated attempts to fix the refineries have failed over the years. He stressed that even during his time in office, he had concluded that the facilities would not perform under government control.
He said, “See what we did with Nigerian railways. See what we did with the national shipping company. See what we are doing now, even with the NNPC. The NNPC has refineries, and I said to people that it will never work. And a man had the audacity to say, ‘Am I a chemical engineer?”
Obasanjo also revealed that he once approached Shell to take over the refineries, but the company declined multiple offers.
“Look, when I was there, I called Shell. I said, ‘Look, please, I beg you, come and take 10 per cent equity and run the refinery for us.’ They said no. I said, ‘Okay, if you don’t want to take equity, don’t take equity. Come and run the refineries. They said no,” he stated.
He said he later sought a direct explanation from a senior Shell official, who outlined several concerns about Nigeria’s refining sector.
“So, I called him, and I said, ‘Tell me, be honest with me. Why don’t you want to handle this?’ He said first, they want to let me know that they make most of their profits on the upstream, not the downstream.”
According to Obasanjo, the official also cited the small size of Nigeria’s refineries, poor maintenance culture, and corruption issues as key reasons for rejecting the proposal.
“He said they run their downstream without making a loss, but they don’t make a lot of profit from it. It’s more of a service than a major profit-making. So that’s number one.
“Number two: he said our refineries are too small. This was when I was an elected President. He said our refineries are too small. One is 60,000 barrels, and another is 100,000 barrels. He said refineries at that time were in the range of 250,000 barrels to 300,000 barrels. Number three: he said our refineries are not well-maintained. We call quacks and amateurs to come and maintain our refineries. The refineries are not in good order. He said, ‘Number four, there’s too much corruption around our refineries, and they don’t want to be part of that,” Obasanjo explained.
The former president further recounted how businessman Aliko Dangote once agreed to acquire a majority stake in two refineries during his administration.
“Until one day, Aliko (Dangote) came and offered $750m to take two of the refineries; that will be 51 per cent. I said, ‘Wow, God, you are really a God of miracles.’ I told Aliko to bring the money quickly. They brought the money, and they paid,” he said.
However, the deal was later reversed by his successor, the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, following pressure from officials within the national oil company.
Obasanjo said he personally met Yar’Adua to explain the decision but the reversal still went ahead.
“When I left office, NNPC went to my successor and convinced him. So I got up. I went to Umar. I said, ‘Look, Umar, maybe you don’t know; this is why we did what we did.’ He said, ‘Well, NNPC came to me.’ I said, ‘But you know that NNPC cannot run this thing. He said he knew. I asked, ‘Then why did you give in? He said because of pressure.”
He added that selling the refineries today may yield far less value than expected, describing them as near scrap.
The former president also criticised the huge sums spent on rehabilitation over the years. He said about $16 billion has been committed to the refineries, an amount close to what Dangote used to build a modern facility.
He noted that the current NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari, is among the few officials who have publicly acknowledged the poor condition of the refineries.
The NNPC had earlier announced plans to conclude the selection of technical partners by June 2026. This followed previous rehabilitation efforts which saw some of the refineries briefly reopened in 2024 before being shut again due to low performance.
Ojulari had admitted that the facilities were operating below global standards, making their products less competitive, especially when compared to the privately owned Dangote Refinery.
Dangote has also maintained that his decision to build the refinery was influenced by the reversal of the earlier sale agreement. He has repeatedly expressed doubts about the future of the government-owned refineries.
As of the time of filing this report, the NNPC had yet to officially respond to Obasanjo’s latest claims.