Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has repeatedly declared that Nigeria’s government-run refineries specifically those in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna will never work effectively as long as they remain under state control.

In a recent interview aired on Saturday night by Sony Irabor Live, Obasanjo reiterated his long-standing position that structural inefficiencies and systemic issues have doomed these facilities to failure.

He said, “One of the lessons that I learnt is that PPP (public-private partnership) works. Look, one project that has not been destroyed by the government in Nigeria is the NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas), where the private sector has 51 per cent, and the Nigerian government has 49 per cent.

“See what we did with Nigerian railways. See what we did with the national shipping company. See what we are doing now, even with the NNPC. The NNPC has refineries, and I said to people that it will never work. And a man had the audacity to say, ‘Am I a chemical engineer?”

Obasanjo spoke about his failed efforts to woo Shell, a global energy firm, into running the refineries. “Look, when I was there, I called Shell. I said, ‘Look, please, I beg you, come and take 10 per cent equity and run the refinery for us.’ They said no. I said, ‘Okay, if you don’t want to take equity, don’t take equity. Come and run the refineries. They said no,” he stated.

The former president narrated how he invited a top official of Shell for a one-on-one conversation to know why his offers were turned down.

“So, I called him, and I said, ‘Tell me, be honest with me. Why don’t you want to handle this?’ He said first, they want to let me know that they make most of their profits on the upstream, not the downstream.

He said they run their downstream without making a loss, but they don’t make a lot of profit from it. It’s more of a service than a major profit-making. So that’s number one.

“Number two: he said our refineries are too small. This was when I was an elected President. He said our refineries are too small. One is 60,000 barrels, and another is 100,000 barrels. He said refineries at that time were in the range of 250,000 barrels to 300,000 barrels. Number three: he said our refineries are not well-maintained. We call quacks and amateurs to come and maintain our refineries. The refineries are not in good order. He said, ‘Number four, there’s too much corruption around our refineries, and they don’t want to be part of that,” Obansanjo explained.

He recalled that he counted the country lucky then when the President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, told him of the willingness to offer $750m to take 51 per cent of two of the facilities.

“Until one day, Aliko (Dangote) came and offered $750m to take two of the refineries; that will be 51 per cent. I said, ‘Wow, God, you are really a God of miracles.’ I told Aliko to bring the money quickly. They brought the money, and they paid,” he said.

However, the Balogun Owu explained further that his successor, the late Umar Yar’adua, reversed the deal after he left office, claiming he was under too much pressure from the NNPC.

He mentioned that only the current NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari, has said the truth about the state of the refineries so far.

“When I left office, NNPC went to my successor and convinced him. So I got up. I went to Umar. I said, ‘Look, Umar, maybe you don’t know; this is why we did what we did.’ He said, ‘Well, NNPC came to me.’ I said, ‘But you know that NNPC cannot run this thing. He said he knew. I asked, ‘Then why did you give in? He said because of pressure. And I said, ‘Look, when you sell these refineries, you will not get 200 million (dollars) for them, because you will sell them as scrap.’

“Only the present NNPC head has told the country the truth. But in the meantime, I was told that they have spent about $16bn, which is only $4bn short of what Aliko used to build Africa’s largest refinery,” Obasanjo said.

In November 2025, the NNPC announced a fresh target of June 2026 to finalise the selection of technical partners for the refineries.

Ojulari said that despite the rehabilitation and reopening of the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries in 2024 before they were later reclosed, the facilities were operating “well below international standards”, making their products commercially uncompetitive, especially compared to the privately owned Dangote refinery.

Dangote said he built his refinery after the Yar’Adua administration reversed the sale of the NNPC refineries to him and his other associates. He is also of the opinion that the NNPC refineries may never work again.

The NNPC communications office has yet to respond to messages seeking reactions to the former president’s claims.