The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited’s GCEO, Bayo Ojulari, has come under fire from the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN) over remarks he made regarding the Port Harcourt refinery.
According to reports, Ojulari had previously asserted that the Port Harcourt plant was suffering enormous losses, which prompted the shutdown of the establishment.
As state-owned refineries were shut down, Ojulari urged Nigerians to give thanks to God for the Dangote refinery, stating that it gave them a “breathing space.”
However, Joseph Obele, the national public relations officer (PRO) of PETROAN, requested in a statement on Wednesday that the NNPC executive refrain from praising the Dangote refinery based on the state-owned asset’s failure.
He criticized Ojulari’s position that the Dangote refinery’s success should be the only reason Nigerians should be “thankful.”
He stated that private investment cannot take the place of the government’s constitutional and financial duty to effectively manage public assets, notwithstanding the strategic significance and admirable accomplishment of the privately held refinery.
Profit and efficiency are the driving forces behind Dangote Refinery’s private investment. In contrast, Nigerians have access to national assets held in trust by NNPC. Obele stated that one cannot be used as a justification for the other’s shortcomings.
He cautioned that the NNPC leadership’s frequent public confessions of ineptitude might damage Nigeria’s energy security framework, diminish investor confidence, and jeopardize years of policy initiatives focused on job creation, price stability, and local refining.
The NNPC GCEO was urged by Obele to realize that his role was to address issues, “not to retreat behind the success of a private refinery.”
Since Dangote is already supplying Nigeria’s fuel needs, he called the claim that there is no hurry to reopen the Port Harcourt Refinery “most worrisome.”
According to Obele, “such a statement is annoying, unacceptable, and indicative of leadership that is not solution-centric.”
According to the PETROAN PRO, Nigeria cannot keep normalizing institutional failure, waste, and the retrospective defense of bad choices.
He emphasized that acknowledging failure is only significant if it is accompanied by responsibility, changes, and a convincing strategy to stop it from happening again.
Obele added that in order “to demand the removal of the NNPC GCEO should the Port Harcourt Refinery fail to resume operations on or before 1 March 2026,” he will work with civil society organizations and pertinent stakeholders to investigate legal possibilities.
He cautioned that if the massive sums already spent on rehabilitation are not immediately addressed, further downtime may result in rust, corrosion, and equipment failure, making the entire refurbishment attempt pointless.
Join Television Nigerian Whatsapp Now
Join Television Nigerian Facebook Now
Join Television Nigerian Twitter Now
Join Television Nigerian YouTUbe Now
