Buhari desires to leave functional refineries as legacy – Sylva

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, discloses that President Muhammadu Buhari wants to leave functional refineries as the legacy of his eight-year government.

Sylva spoke while presenting on Channels Television’s ‘Sunday Politics’ programme monitored by Top Naija.

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva

Top Naija had earlier stated that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) last Wednesday endorsed the plan by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to rehabilitate the Port Harcourt refinery with $1.5bn.

Talking on Sunday, the minister stated, “We are focusing now on the rehabilitation now that the FEC has approved the rehabilitation.

“The discussion on the management of the refinery will commence and that will be another discussion of how long the contract for operations and maintenance will last and then the next step are, you going to privatise, are you going to commercialise, are you going to concession. There are a lot of options opened to government, but we can’t discuss that now.”

The plan of the Federal Government to spend $1.5bn on the Port Harcourt refinery have been extremely criticised by a lot of Nigerians but the Sylva declared that Nigerians should hold the All Progressives Congress (APC) régime accountable for its rehabilitation.

The minister said, “We are not lying to Nigerians. We have told them that this is going to be in three phases and the first phase, which is definitely going to be within the tenure of this administration and you should hold us to it is 18 months and we are going to take the refinery to 90 per cent of the nameplate of its capacity and that is what you should hold us to.”

“What President Buhari wants to leave as a legacy are refineries that are functional. That is really what we are looking at because what is going to happen to those refineries later will be decided by Nigerians and by future administrations.”

Nigeria, the largest oil producer in Africa with four dysfunctional refineries, has for quite a few years been importing the majority of its refined petroleum products due to the failure of its refineries to refine crude oil produced within the nation.