Why Nigerian govt is rehabilitating refineries – Sylva

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, on Thursday, explained why the Federal Government is working hard to rehabilitate the country’s refineries.

Sylva, who featured in a Channels Television programme, Politics Today, said the federal government is not in the best position to manage the refineries.

He, however, assured Nigerians that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration would hand over the refineries to professional managers.

The minister’s statement came just 24 hours after the federal government approved contracts worth $1.4 billion for the rehabilitation of the Warri and Kaduna refineries.

He said: “I will agree with you that government is not the best manager of refineries and that is why this time, we are actually going to have professional managers to manage the refineries. We are not going to manage the refineries at all.”

READ ALSO: Nigerian govt approves $1.4bn for rehabilitation of Warri, Kaduna refineries

Sylva dismissed claims that the government planned to sell the refineries in their present state.

He added: “We believe that we should get the refineries back to life before we decide on the option of whether we are going to privatise or sell all the refineries.

“If we try to sell the refineries which you call dead refineries, you will be the one first person to say we are selling dead refineries to people.

.“We want to sell live refineries; refineries that are working and I think that is the fairest thing for the government to do. This is why we have decided to get all our refineries working. We want to prove to you that we can get these refineries working.”

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now