A Chairman of Energy Transition Study Group of Nigeria, Olabode Sowunmi has alleged that the companies that previously worked on the four government owned refineries had ceased operations due to the outdated equipment.
He stated that the company that originally commissioned the refineries in the old USSR no longer existed, having been sold to Ukrainian ownership. He highlighted that efforts were made to revive old technologies to enable the Nigerian refineries to work but the companies demanded excessive compensation to complete the job.
He said in an interview with Channels TV From 20:10, ”We are told the refineries will work on a certain date and it didn’t work. Now we are not able to differentiate whether it is lack of competence or there is sabotage in terms of fifth columnist being in that place or it is just lack of political will. We were told that when they needed to do some turn around maintenance on the refineries.
They needed a vendor for it and they found out that in the old USSR where the refineries was commissioned, the particular company that was involved in that place had ceased to exist. That company was no longer owned by Russian, it is now under Ukrainian. And the companies that could work on the 4 refineries had ceased working on them because these are old equipments. So they had to now start talking to them to rewake old technologies. But those guys were demanding for a lot to get the job done.”….Vìêw–Morê