While it lasted, former Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, and his team savoured the grandeur of stardom. Ostensibly relieved and grateful Nigerians, who had relished hope that they were going to be finally saved from the despicable era of fuel importation, momentarily clapped and doffed their hats for them.
And a particularly enthralled President Bola Tinubu gave the presidential thumbs-up for them.
Kyari and his team, indeed, enjoyed national acclaim for breaking the jinx, or so it seemed, of the turnaround maintenance (TAM) of the nation’s four refineries, located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna cities.
For over 20 years, the refineries were taken through a convoluted TAM journey that became a vicious circle, gulping billions in foreign currency.
However, the Buhari regime began the rehabilitation of the PortHarcourt Refineries in 2021 when Italy’s Marie Tecnimont was contracted at $1.5 billion. But it could not make any headway.
Then, the Tinubu government revivified national brio and enthusiasm in the project. The refinery has a total and full capacity of 210,000 barrels per day (bpd). The old plant has 60,000 bpd, while the new plant, commissioned in 1989, has 150,000 bpd.
After a spell of rigmarole, the Port Harcourt Refining Company finally resumed operations in November 2024, 11 months behind schedule. The Kyari regime also worked at the Warri Refining Petroleum Company (WRPC), with an installed capacity of 125,000 bpd, and which had been moribund for decades due to technical issues, bringing it back to life by December 30.
Situated in Ekpan, Uwvie, and Ubeji areas of Warri, the petrochemical plant has an annual production capacity of 13,000 metric tonnes of polypropylene and 18,000 metric tonnes of carbon black. Commissioned in 1978, the WRPC was established to cater to the markets in Nigeria’s southern and southwestern regions.
However, could Kyari and his team have taken the nation through a needless, duplicitous merry-go-round? Could they have deceived the nation on such a grandiose scale? Emerging revelations, which have punctured the operational integrity of the former NNPCL team, especially the transparency, efficiency and the overall management of those rehabilitated refineries while they held sway, seem to point towards that befuddling possibility!
First, the Warri Refinery, which consumed $897.6milion in maintenance costs, failed to produce Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) and was shut down barely a month after former NNPC CEO, Kyari, declared it operational. Second, the Port Harcourt Refining Company, which resumed operations in November 2024, has, according to emerging facts, been discovered to be operating below 40 per cent installed capacity!
Reports emanating from freshly obtained documents have tended to have debunked the claims made by NNPCL’s immediate past management, including the ex-CEO and the spokesman, Femi Soleye, about the actual standing of the rehabilitated refineries.
Briefing his team before the tour of the Warri plant following the revitalisation, Kyari was quoted to have said that many Nigerians doubted that such projects were real or possible in the country, but insisted that the revitalisation was genuine and visible.
Kyari had said: “We are taking you through our plant. This plant is running. Although it is not 100 per cent complete, we are still in the process. Many people think these things are not real. They think real things are not possible in this country. We want you to see that this is real.
“I must congratulate our team for their determination and extreme belief that this company can restart this plant. This has brought the result we are seeing in collaboration with our contractors. We have proved that it is possible to restart a plant that you deliberately shut down. We have proved this.”
The company’s spokesman, Femi Soneye, was also reported to have made quite specious claims about the Port Harcourt Refinery, recommissioned on November 26, 2024. He had claimed that the plant was operating at 70 per cent of its installed capacity, with plans to increase output to 90 per cent in subsequent months!
However, the document obtained exclusively by a national daily from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), providing detailed production data for each refinery in the country, revealed that the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company, with an installed capacity of 125,000 barrels per day, has remained shut since January 25, 2025.
The report is said to link the shutdown to critical faults in the refinery’s Crude Distillation Unit Main Heater, which raised safety concerns and forced a complete halt in operations.
According to the document, the Port Harcourt Refinery, with a nameplate capacity of 60,000 barrels per day, has been operating at just 37.87 per cent of its installed capacity six months after its long-awaited revitalisation, contrary to Soleye’s bogus claims.
The refinery’s monthly production data is said to have shown that it produced a monthly average of 82.55 million litres of refined petroleum products between November, 2024 and April, 2025, 135.45ML less than its estimated optimal production of 218 million litres per month.
These discoveries are infernally inglorious and utterly reprehensible. It is indecorous for the former NNPCL management to have resorted to such a ritzy scale of propaganda and outright lies to deceive Nigerians about the true state of those refineries.
Even The Presidency was hoodwinked. In celebrating the revamping of the petroleum plants, the President had enthused via a press release, that it would contribute to achieving energy sufficiency, enhancing energy security, and boosting Nigeria’s export capacity.
“In alignment with the Renewed Hope Agenda focused on shared economic prosperity for all, the President reaffirms his administration’s commitment to achieving energy sufficiency, enhancing energy security, and boosting export capacity for Nigerians,” the statement had added.
It is highly disheartening for the refineries that had gulped so much resources to have been so botched up. It is such a colossal waste. It is more indecorous and scandalous for the former management to have deceived Nigerians about the correct standing of the refineries.
The faux pas has expectedly elicited an uprush of angst and deep sense of disappointment from concerned Nigerians, many whom took umbrage at it. The development has prompted a flurry of punitive actions from the federal authorities.
Already, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has begun probing how the funds allocated to each of the three rehabilitation refineries were expended. About $1,559,239,084.36 is said to have been allocated to the Port Harcourt Refinery; $740,669,600 released for the Kaduna Refinery and $656,963,938 approved for the Warri Refinery.
The scandal might have prompted the recent sack of over 200 staff of the oil giant, including management top shots, shortly after the resumption of the new GCEO, Bayo Ojulari. The MDs and some officials of the three refineries have also reportedly been arrested over possible financial malfeasance under their watch. Already, a sum of N80 billion has allegedly been found in the account of one of the sacked MDs.
Meanwhile, the former NNPC boss pledged readiness to respond to all lawful queries concerning his tenure.
In a tweet on Saturday evening, Kyari said his conscience is clear and that he is proud of his service to Nigeria and to God over the past three decades.
“It should be stated that having served the NNPC and the NNPCL for 34 years, and 17 of those in management roles and especially the last 5 years and 9 months, I had little time for leave of even two weeks. So, I am thankful for the opportunity to serve under their Excellencies Presidents Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” he said.
“I must emphasize that I served with the fear of God knowing fully well as a Muslim that if I do not account before man, I will account before Allah, and that I am better off accounting to the institutions of man. Therefore, having served in public capacity, I am willing and happy to account for my stewardship in this world.”
Kyari said he is currently taking a much-needed break after the recent dissolution of the board and management of NNPCL.
“At present, I am taking a well-deserved rest after the dissolution of the management and board of the NNPCL, of which I was the Group Chief Executive,” he added.
“I sincerely thank my family and friends who have reached out to me or tried to do so and assure them that I am available to respond to all lawful queries.”
The alleged perfidy of Kyari and his team is so irksome. We admonish that the probe into the execrable actions be thorough, while everyone found wanting should be prosecuted to serve as deterrent.
Then, we back calls by some stakeholders that a state of emergency be declared on the rehabilitation of the refineries, so full and proper official attention could be paid to addressing the rigmarole that has plagued their TAM.
Finally, we reiterate our earlier suggestion that the Federal Government put the refineries up for a semi-privatization arrangement. We recommend a unique government-private arrangement that will see private business interests with proven, relevant track records running the refineries, while the government will retain substantial stakes in their ownership structure.
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