By Kingston Magare
Nigeria seemingly unending dependence on imported petroleum products has come under attack by the 36 States governors who met with the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited executives Thursday in Abuja.
The governors maintained that it was embarrassing for Nigeria to be importing petrol products when there are three NNPCL owned refineries laying fallow.
Speaking on behalf of the governors Hope Uzodinma of Imo State urged the NNPCL group chief executive Mele Kyari, to reverse the trend, which he described as an aberration.
“We must encourage the homegrown solution that the President just introduced, encouraging Dangote Refinery and we should repair our Port Harcourt Refinery, repair our Warri Refinery, repair our Kaduna Refinery, and then produce what we eat, and eat what we produce.
“We shouldn’t rely on importation of crude oil. For me, it is an aberration in the first place, to rely on importation of petroleum products as an oil producing country, while other members of OPEC of our status are now refining crude oil in that country.
“If you refine petroleum products locally, you will cure jobs, you will cure unemployment, you will keep people busy, you will reduce crime, and then you will also be proud to answer an oil producing nation,” Uzodinma said.
This is just as about 100 civil society organisations (CSOs) plan to occupy the headquarters of the NNPCL to protest the neglect of the three government owned refineries.
They passed a vote of no confidence Mr. Kyari, describing him as a clog in the wheels of development of the energy sector of Nigeria.
The CSOs requested that Kyari, the NNPCL and its agencies should come out and explain to Nigerians how the $3 billion spent on rehabilitation and activation of the Warri Refinery was spent.
