August 6, 2024.
By Samuel Ogunsona
At least 28 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have pledged to establish an accountability hub to monitor and track the progress of President Tinubu’s directive on the Dangote Refinery project, ensuring transparency and effective implementation.
Fresh from their weekend tour of the world’s largest single-train refinery in Lagos, the organization expressed awe at the sheer scale and world-class infrastructure of the project, spanning an impressive 2,635 hectares – a vast area roughly six times the size of Victoria Island.
Solomon Adodo of the Rise Up for A United Nigeria, who spoke on behalf of the 28 CSOs expressed his dismay over government reluctance to take full advantage of the project with high potential to alleviate the nation’s fuel crisis and foreign exchange challenges.
Adodo said urge Federal Government to adopt Dangote’s refinery as a national asset.
According to him, “Having gone round to see this world class project,” Adodo continued, “we are at a loss as to why the government could decide to turn against Nigerians in this manner. But we are not too surprised given our past experiences. Those who are profiting from our collective misfortune will not want the Dangote refinery to work.
“We are ready to defend this facility with everything as civil society organizations. We are not speaking on our behalf but on behalf of all Nigerians and on behalf of our fatherland. It leaves much to be desired how an agency of government with oversight function to guide to grow such a project as this would now be disparaging same project. This is too bad.
“We have seen for ourselves and we have cleared all doubt as to the completion of this refinery and the readiness to supply all our domestic needs. We will expose them all. Anyone who is not ready to ensure Nigerians have a new lease of life must give way.
“Going forward, we are going to set up a situation room to monitor the compliance of the NNPCL with the directive of Mr. President that Dangote Refinery would be supplied with Crude in Naira because we know that the enemies of the people would want to adopt another strategy to sabotage the presidential directive.
“It is a criminal audacity for an agency of government to brazenly disparage a national asset like Dangote Refinery, moreso when government has four refineries and all of them are moribund, how then would you treat a private investor who has committed everything to build a functional refinery much more bigger than all the four owned by government put together.
“Nigerians are not stupid; we all know what is interplaying here. They told us that after removing fuel subsidy, market forces would force the price down. What a fallacy…. Here we are, the forces have only succeeded in pushing the price up. Now, we have a local refinery that will bail us out, yet they don’t want it to operate.” He said
The Vice-President, Dangote Industries Limited, Mr. Devakumar Edwin, in his statement said the refinery will stop the exportation of Nigeria’s crude and importation of finished products which will add value to the country’s economy.
“This is what Dangote refinery seeks to correct,” we did same in Cement and Sugar sectors where Nigeria was a leading importer of those products and with the coming of Dangote leading the backward integration programme of the government, others came into the sector and together Nigeria now exports cement to other countries.
“What we want to do in Refinery, we have done it other businesses, Nigeria used to be the biggest importer of Sugar, we came in and changed the narrative. We led the backward integration scheme of the federal government, and we now produce sugar locally for domestic consumption and others have joined us. We did same in Cement by opening up production plant and today Nigeria exports cement to other countries.
“In a business no one was interested in investing into, Dangote delved into it, determined to ensure Nigeria no longer imports fuel, invested massively and came up with the world’s largest single train refinery. He said he would not take his money to Dubai or Swiss banks as others are doing, he decided to invest at home and now they are saying he wants to create monopoly.
“We didn’t ask for any favour other than that we want to buy crude to produce, first they said there was no crude, later they said we would have to pay some dollars above the prevailing crude market price. And this is a global market where you can track crude prices anytime. We resorted to buying crude from Brazil and United States. Later they said we should not be announcing the price of the products.
“Even the US that is the leading proponent of free market economy protects its local industries by imposing huge duty on from foreign imports just to protect local industries. This is a man that Saudi Aramco once approached to come and cite his refinery in Saudi Arabia, promising steady supply of crude. Abu Dahbi also invited him to do same on their soil but he rejected insisting he would build at home, now he did that and a facility that is supposed to add value to Nigeria’s economy is being frustrated.” He stated.
