Oil expert says Nigerian government is too corrupt, incompetent to run a refinery
- Olagoke Balogun said the refinery in Nigeria can never be fixed due to the corruption in the Nigerian government.
- The oil expert said the greatest atrocities ever made to Nigerians was late President Yar'Adua reversing the privatisation of Nigeria's refinery.
- Balogun said Yar'Adua's decision set Nigeria back for 20 years, and Buhari's decision will take 15 years to correct
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Olagoke Balogun, an expert in the oil industry, said Nigerian government is too corrupt to run a refinery. Balogun, who had worked in the oil and gas sector for 13 years, said this in reaction to the failure of the refinery.
He described the management of a refinery as a complex operation, stating that the gross incompetence of the government makes it impossible to have the refinery managed by the Nigerian state.
Balogun, who is now an entrepreneur and founder of So Fresh, supported the idea of privatisation, condemning the reversal of the refinery sale by late President Umaru Yar'adua. He said the reversal was one of the greatest atrocities ever made.
Commenting on the state of the refinery, the entrepreneur said:
"Refineries are one of the most complex facilities to run, worked in some home and abroad for 13 years. They are capital, technology and management intensive operations, yet low margin.
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"It's a precise science. The Nigerian government will never ever be able to run a refinery. One of the greatest atrocities ever committed in Nigeria is the reversal of the sale of those refineries by Yaradua, set the country back by another 20 years.
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"Aside from corruption, the Nigerian state is grossly incompetent to run such complex operations even if they wanted to.
"While Nigerians looks for silver bullets to set the country on a path of growth & development, it's everyday decisions like this that compounds over time to either take us forward of keep us in the reverse gear. Our policy formulation & economic choices leaves less to be desired.
"The painful part of the decisions the current government has taken over the last 5 years is that the real effect may last the next 15 years to correct before we even talk of moving forward.
"What I think OBJ did in the first 8 years was to correct our course with sound policy and economic choices, unfortunately, the next 14 years has been in reverse. Who's going to set us on a correction path again? 2023 seems to be another 1999 opportunity."
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Meanwhile, Legit.ng had earlier reported that GTBank lured investors back to its stocks at the capital market after stating that it generated N455 billion in full-year 2020, surpassing the revenue generated during the corresponding period of 2019.
The announcement was made days after shareholders lost over N80 billion in the stock market. Some shareholders had been selling off their shares to protect their profit.
Fakoyejo Olalekan is a Business and Financial Journalist with over three years of experience in covering finance and business activities within Nigeria and offshore. Prior to joining Legit.ng, he worked at Nairametrics where he wrote financial and investment analysis articles. Olalekan is a resourceful and result-driven journalist with a track record for conducting extensive research and interviews to produce articles that provide different perspectives to market activities.
Source: Legit.ng
