The President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has expressed doubt over the prospects of the state-owned refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna ever becoming operational again. Dangote noted that despite the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited spending as much as $18 billion on these refineries, they have failed to produce results. Speaking on Thursday while hosting members of the Global CEO Africa delegation from the Lagos Business School after a tour of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lekki, Lagos, the billionaire industrialist highlighted that his 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery now allocates over 50 per cent of its production to Premium Motor Spirit (petrol). In contrast, he said, the government-run refineries dedicated only about 22 per cent of their output to petrol. Dangote also recounted how his earlier attempt to acquire the refineries was reversed a few months after former President Olusegun Obasanjo left office in 2007. According to him, the managers of the refineries convinced then-President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua that Obasanjo had sold the facilities to him below their real value as a farewell gesture, leading to the cancellation of the sale. “The refineries that we bought before, which were owned by Nigeria, were doing about 22 per cent of PMS. We bought the refineries in January 2007. Then we had to return them to the government because there was a change of government. “And the managing director at that time convinced Yar’adua that the refineries would work. They said they just gave them to us as a parting gift or so. And as of today, they have spent about $18bn on those refineries, and they are still not working. And I don’t think, and I doubt very much if they will work,” he said. Dangote emphasised that the turnaround maintenance of the refineries was like trying to modernise a car built 40 years ago, when technology has advanced. “(The turnaround maintenance) is like you trying to modernise a car that was built 40 years ago, when technology and everything have changed. Even if you change the engine, the body will not be able to take the shock of that new technology engine,” he stated. Dangote’s remarks reinforced former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s statement last year regarding the refineries, two of which were shut down again despite being declared operational by former NNPC Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari, in the fourth quarter of 2024. Obasanjo had explained that the NNPC knew it lacked the capacity to run the refineries, revealing that international oil companies such as Shell had previously declined his request to manage them. He also recalled that some Nigerian investors, including Aliko Dangote, once paid $750 million to acquire the refineries, but the deal was cancelled by his successor, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. “I ran to him (Yar’Adua), I said, ‘You know this is not right’. He said, ‘Well, NNPC said they can do it.’ I said, ‘NNPC cannot do it,’ I told my successor that ‘the refineries, from what I heard and know, will not work and when you want to sell them, you will not get anybody to buy them at $200m as scrap’. And that is the situation we are in. “So, why do we do this kind of thing to ourselves? NNPC knew that they could not do it, but they knew they could eat and carry on with the corruption that was going on in NNPC. When people were there to do it, they put pressure. In a civilised society, those people should be in jail,” Obasanjo had stated. Again, in January, Obasanjo said, “I was told not too long ago that since that time, more than $2bn have been squandered on the refineries and they still will not work. “If a company like Shell tells me what they told me, I will believe them. If anybody tells you now that it (the refinery) is working, why are they now with Aliko (Dangote)? And Aliko will make his refinery work; not only make it work, he will make it deliver.” Obasanjo concluded with a Yoruba proverb, comparing inflated claims about the refineries’ performance to a farmer who planted 100 heaps of yam but falsely claimed to have planted 200. “They say that after he has harvested 100 heaps of yams, he will also have 100 heaps of lies. You know what that means,” he said.