The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Bayo Ojulari, has cast a shadow over the future of Nigeria’s ageing state-owned refineries, signalling that a sale of the assets is now firmly on the table.
Speaking to Bloomberg on Thursday at the 9th OPEC International Seminar in Vienna, Ojulari admitted that years of heavy investment in the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries had failed to yield results due to the deteriorated condition of the facilities and their outdated technology.
“We’re reviewing all our refinery strategies now. We hope before the end of the year, we’ll be able to conclude that review,” Ojulari said. “Sale is not out of the question. All the options are on the table, to be frank.”
His remarks appear to validate concerns raised just hours earlier by Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, who declared during a visit to his 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lekki that he doubted the state-run refineries would ever return to full operation—despite having consumed as much as $18bn in public spending.
“The refineries have gulped about $18bn, and they are still not working. I don’t think—and I doubt very much—that they will ever work,” Dangote said. “Trying to modernise them is like upgrading a 40-year-old car with new technology—the body just can’t take the shock.”
Ojulari echoed this sentiment, stating that the NNPC had deployed several technologies during the rehabilitation process, but the results were “not what we expected.” He noted that restoring neglected infrastructure to operational status had proven more complex than anticipated.
The comments mark a significant departure from earlier assurances given by Ojulari’s predecessor, Mele Kyari, who in late 2024 declared that the refineries would soon return to full operation. Since then, the optimism has unraveled: the recently re-opened Port Harcourt refinery was quietly shut down again six months later, while Warri refinery reportedly ceased operations a month after Kyari’s high-profile re-commissioning ceremony in December.
The statements by both Ojulari and Dangote have further ignited calls for the privatisation or outright scrapping of the refineries. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo weighed in last year, insisting that the NNPC was never capable of running the facilities and recounting how oil giants such as Shell declined to manage the assets when approached during his administration.
Obasanjo also revisited the controversial reversal of his 2007 sale of the refineries to Dangote and other investors—a deal later annulled by his successor, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. “I told my successor the refineries would not work,” Obasanjo said, “and that when the time came to sell them again, they wouldn’t fetch $200 million as scrap.”
His remarks appear prescient. Industry analysts and trade associations, including the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, have increasingly described the refineries as a “financial drain.” Several experts have advised the government to abandon further rehabilitation and instead invest in modular refinery infrastructure that could offer more immediate economic returns.
Public records show staggering investments over the years: $1.4bn was approved for Port Harcourt in 2021, $897m for Warri, and $586m for Kaduna. In that same year, N100bn was spent on rehabilitation, averaging N8.33bn per month. An additional $396.33m was poured into turnaround maintenance between 2013 and 2017.
Despite this flood of funding, not a single litre of refined product has emerged from the state-owned facilities in recent years.
By contrast, Dangote’s private refinery has already allocated more than half of its capacity to Premium Motor Spirit (petrol), in contrast to the 22% once produced by the government-run refineries.
As frustration mounts, pressure is growing on President Bola Tinubu’s administration to take decisive action. With the NNPC’s internal review set to conclude by year-end, a landmark decision on the fate of Nigeria’s refineries—whether to sell, scrap, or salvage—appears imminent.
