Senate probes ‘Poor State’ of refineries

By Musa Adamu

The Senate is set to investigate what it described as the poor state of refinaries in the country.
According to the Senate despite $25 billion dollars spent in the last 25 years, the refineries are still moribond.
The decision to investigate the poor state of the refinaries followed a point of order 42 and 52 raised by Sen Yusuf Abdullahi Yusuf (Taraba).
The point of order tagged: “The Moribond Refineries In The Country,” made the Senate to mandate it three committees to investigate and report back to the chamber.
Yusuf, during his presentation said billion of dollars have been spent on turn around maintenance of the refineries but added that the oil companies still face total collapse.
“There is negligence on the part of the NNPC,” Yusuf said of the non functioning of the refineries.
Accordingly, the Senate resolved to investigate the non optimal performance of the refinaries, urging the NNPC to do total overhaul of the refinaries.
The Senate also direct it’s committees on Petroleum, Upstream/Down Stream and Gas to carry out an oversight on the Nigeria refinaries and report back.
“Committees are to investigate the turn around maintenance carryout by the NNPC and ascertain their current state,” the Senate president, Ahmad Lawan said.
In his contribution, Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun Central) who commended Yusuf Abubakar Yusuf for the motion, said one of the problem the country is facing is lack of maintenance culture.
He said it was not the first time attention was drawn to the near collapse of the refineries in the country and urged his colleagues to do a thorough job during the investigation process.
“Oil should be a blessing to us but in Nigeria, it make alot of establishments lazy. We should be concern about it. The refineries are bad and people are now taking the crude outside the country and bringing back refined product to the country on an exobitant prices,” Amosun said.
“The downstream committee should critically look at the problem,” Amosun said adding that $25 billion dollars went down the drain in turnaround maintenance of the refineries in the last 25 years,” Amosun said insisting that they must make sure all the strategic assets in the country works including the refinaries for good revenue generation.
“It will be on the interest of all of us to increase the internally generated revenue,” Amosun added.
Senate President, Ahmad Lawan said the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) would be worked upon in February adding that there are issues that will occupy the committee members saddled with the responsibility of investigating the state of the refineries but urged them to do a thorough job and report back to the Senate.