Minister of State for Petroleum Resource, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu yesterday
said the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government has not spent a dime
on the country’s four refineries, an achievement not many have paid
attention to.
Kachikwu said this in Abuja during a presentation of three years key achievements of the ministry and award to its staff.
Daily
Trust estimates that more than N264 billion was spent on turn around
maintenance of the refineries by successive governments before the
present administration but the plants have failed to deliver.
The
minister said all the efforts made so far to fix the refineries have
been to find private investors to collaborate with government to put
these refineries in order and then save government money.
“What
is important is that for the first time, the president had been able to
say that he would repair the refineries without government money.
Nobody had been able to give attention to that,” Kachikwu said.
“No government one penny had been spent on any refinery,” he added.
“This
is because every Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) that we have done in the
past has always come up with stories. Wrong contracting models, wrong
delivery, wrong work, and we don’t want to go that way.”
He said government’s target was to bring in private sector investors to finance the repairs of the refineries.
“NNPC
have struggled to find the financiers, now financiers have finally been
found but to agree on terms have been difficult. I am hoping that by
the end of this year and first quarter next year we would have completed
the commercial aspect of this financial undertaking which is in the
excess of over $2 billion.”
Kachikwu said he would love to see a
day when there would be no fuel scarcity in the country but for that to
happen, the liberalization of the sector was going to be a panacea.
“As long as we continue to subsidize products, create market-unfriendly type practices, we would continue to struggle,” he said.
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