Dangote Refinery: Nasarawa Gov Slams Buhari Over $19bn Waste On TAM
- Insists amount enough for new refineries in 8 years
BY EDMOND ODOK – Less than two weeks after ending his eight years tenure, immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari has received some bashing for wasting over $19 billion used in building the Dangote Refinery to maintain Nigeria’s non-functional refineries while in office.
This harsh assessment is coming from the Governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule who says it is regrettable that the Buhari-led government wasted huge public funds on repair contracts for the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries with none of them in a functional state till date.
In a veiled indictment of the past administration for failing to invest in building new refineries for Nigeria in the last eight years, Governor Sule lamented that the so-called Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) cost was more than Dangote’s $19 billion investment in building Africa’s largest petrochemical refinery and the world’s largest single-train petroleum refining facility in the country.
According to him; “Look at how much the President Buhari administration spent on fixing the refineries. In the eight years, he spent more money than the $19 billion that Dangote spent in building a refinery.
“That is one and half times the size of our three refineries combined. Our three refineries in Nigeria today have a total of 450,000 barrels per day, Dangote is 650,000.
“He spent $19 billion on building it. We spent, not building a new one, but in maintaining these refineries more than $19 billion in eight years, yet they have not been maintained.”
Governor Sule, who delivered this harsh verdict on Buhari’s administration misadventure in TAM while featuring on Channels Television Sunrise Daily, however noted that the Dangote Refinery would be a game changer in the nation’s oil sector.
On the subsidy payments removal currently causing hardship for Nigerians nationwide, the Nasarawa State Chief Executive blamed the country’s comatose refineries for what he described as unsustainable huge subsidy payment, saying; “From the government side, I think we didn’t do a good job.
“When Buhari came in in 2015, prices of crude oil dropped by less than 30 dollars. At that time there was zero subsidy” but unfortunately the government did nothing to address the situation then.
However, he acknowledged the complexity of maintaining the refineries due to their diverse components, stressing that; “The refinery is actually a component for water, crude, and diesel, about five or six different components that constitute a refinery.
“The moment the government says we are going to spend $2 billion this year on the refinery. The $2 billion is spent and as far as the President is concerned, they have given $2 billion.
“Now when it goes to the three refineries that we have in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna. Then they say, you now take $700 million, you now take $800 million – by the time they take that, it goes to fix maybe only one component out of the four components that are all bad.”
The Governor maintained that such skewed investment by the Federal Government in the existing refineries certainly cannot deliver on its set target of making them functional as expected
