FG asked to resuscitate refineries, encourage more privatisation

The federal government has been urged to encourage more privatisation of refineries and to resuscitate the four refineries in the country in order to boost the nation’s oil economy.

Delivering the second inaugural lecture of Fountain University, Osogbo, entitled, “Rethinking North-South Relations: The Resource Perspective,” a Professor of Political Science, Oyegoke Lalude, lamented that Nigeria was suffering from an unnecessary petroleum subsidy scandal because of the nation’s inability to refine its oil within.

He warned that the lack of expertise in the refining of oil as experienced in Nigeria should not continue.

Lalude said, “In view of the fact that Nigeria has not been able to meet technical expertise in refining crude oil, the nation has ended up as both exporter and importer of oil; an abnormality and anomaly, to say the very least.

“Invariably, Nigeria has suffered from an unnecessary petroleum subsidy scandal, a terminology that would ordinarily not have surfaced if the nation had faced its obligation to the maintenance of refineries, and the building of new ones.

“Government will need to encourage more privatisation of refineries, while at the same time resuscitating the four other refineries that have been neglected in the past.

“Governments of Third World oil producers should individually, or better still, as a group, work with all the seriousness that it deserves, on localising technology of exploration and production, without which any control of the critical resource will remain at best, pretentious.”

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