Opinion
As President Tinubu Approves Crude Oil Supply To Dangote Refinery – How Will The NNPC/NNPCL Supply Crude Oil To Dangote Refinery?
Let’s set aside our political affiliation and idiosyncrasies. Join me as I try to make sense of the supply of crude oil to Dangote Refinery as ordered and approved by President Tinubu.
It’s laudable that President Tinubu has ordered the NNPC/NNPCL to supply crude oil to Dangote Refinery. Yes, that is good, wonderful and most cheering news in recent times.
It’s public knowledge that former president Buhari used Nigeria’s crude oil to borrow money for his numerous infrastructural projects which Nigerians are enjoying today! Please ignore my sarcasm.
Available information in the public space is that Buhari executed seven solid forward sale agreements, which entails that he borrowed money and pledged our crude oil as payment which will run for several years. Nobody has disputed that; nobody is also asking Buhari any question.
To score cheap political points in the North and court Buhari’s supporters, then presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, in the build-up to the 2023 presidential election, promised to build on the ‘legacies of president Buhari’. And so, in his attempt to build on the legacy of Buhari, President Tinubu pledged our crude oil as payment for the $3.3 billion Afrexim Bank loan that he took in August 2023, barely three months after he assumed office. Deliberately, Bayo Onanuga had suddenly gone mute to counter this.
If Dangote needs about 650,000 barrels of crude oil daily to run his refinery, and the NNPC has just 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day left from the ‘pledged crude oil for loan’, how would the Dangote Refinery get crude oil to refine in her 650,000 BPD refinery? In a situation where Nigeria’s crude oil production is less than 1.5 million BPD, how will the NNPC be able to supply Dangote Refinery enough crude oil to match her 650,000 barrels refining capacity? As it’s said in Warri parlance, “Too much sense dey worry some people.”
President Tinubu, as Nigeria’s minister of petroleum must lead the process to stop the pernicious culture by officials of government regulatory agencies to kill Nigerian businesses for their selfish greed and short-term benefit of favouring imported finished goods/products over locally produced items for corrupt purposes just to line their pockets and in the process kill the employment opportunities provided to Nigerians by businesses established in the nation.
Finally, I leave one question to Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum: where will the NNPC/NNPCL find the difference in the left over from the crude oil that had been pledged as repayment for loans taken by former President Buhari and President Tinubu?
Fellow Nigerians, please put on your thinking caps.
May God bless Nigeria.
© Onorakpene Eviosekwofa
Email: leviose@yahoo.com
July 30, 2024