Petroleum Marketers Side With Tinubu Over Obasanjo on Refinery Revival

Petroleum marketers have rallied behind President Bola Tinubu’s push to bring Nigeria’s dormant refineries back to life, pushing back against former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s claim that the plants are beyond saving.

Both the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria and the Petroleum Product Retail Outlet Owners Association of Nigeria voiced confidence that the refineries could still be turned around. PETROAN president Billy Gillis-Harry argued that past failures shouldn’t be grounds for writing off strategic national assets, noting that Nigeria’s refineries aren’t nearly as old as some still-functioning plants in the Caribbean and South America.

The debate follows Tinubu’s recent pledge, made while hosting leadership of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries would resume operations. He cautioned, however, that simply getting them running wasn’t the real goal  profitability was. Tinubu added that he was taking full ownership of the refineries as inherited assets and was committed to making them work for the country, regardless of how past efforts had unfolded.

Obasanjo has long pushed back on that optimism, favoring public-private partnerships over continued government control. He pointed to the NLNG model  where private investors hold a 51 per cent stake  as proof the approach works, and recalled that Shell had once turned down a chance to take equity in the refineries, citing poor maintenance and corruption. He also revisited how a $750m offer from Aliko Dangote for a majority stake in two refineries fell through during his presidency after NNPC pressured the Yar’Adua administration to reverse the deal. Nigeria has since sunk roughly $16bn into the refineries  nearly matching the cost of Dangote’s much larger privately built plant.

Gillis-Harry acknowledged that history gives Obasanjo’s skepticism weight but insisted the current effort was different, pointing to an executive order reshaping how NNPC spends money. He urged Nigerians not to give up on the assets, especially given how conflicts abroad have exposed the risks of depending on external fuel supplies.

IPMAN’s national vice president, Hammed Fashola, struck a similar note, saying the current rehabilitation approach was more transparent and corruption-free than past attempts. He pointed to a consortium of engineers reportedly set to fund the rehabilitation in exchange for a controlling management stake as a hopeful sign, while still conceding that Obasanjo’s doubts were rooted in a real track record of failed turnaround maintenance spending.

Not everyone agrees with the marketers. Energy expert Dan Kunle argued Tinubu would be better served privatising the refineries outright and redirecting government focus toward the upstream, gas infrastructure and agriculture sectors. He described the plants as technically insolvent and insisted that even if they resumed production, they would never turn a genuine profit  urging government to let private investors take on the rehabilitation risk instead.

With sharply divided views on display, the Tinubu administration now faces pressure to show that this attempt at reviving the refineries succeeds where previous ones have failed.