The chief executive of Nigeria’s state oil company has defended the pause of national refinery operations, but a prominent energy expert argues this highlights deep systemic failures requiring urgent structural reform, not just more funding.
Bayo Ojulari, Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), recently stated that inefficiencies forced the suspension of rehabilitation work at the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries. In response, Professor Wumi Iledare, an expert in petroleum economics, said the admission that the current model risks “destroying value rather than creating it” exposes a fundamental policy flaw.
Speaking in a commentary, Prof. Iledare contended that refinery rehabilitation must be approached as a strict capital investment decision, not a symbolic national project. He warned that injecting funds into assets with persistently inefficient operating models compounds losses rather than enabling recovery. According to Iledare, the core issue is structural weaknesses in management and governance, not merely a lack of financial investment.
The expert acknowledged the candor in Ojulari’s remarks as a necessary shift from managing perception to confronting economic reality. However, he cautioned that the pause must not devolve into indefinite inertia. For any future partnerships to succeed, they must be credible, governance transparent, and performance clearly measurable.
NNPCL haltedoperations at the Port Harcourt refinery in May 2025 for a structural assessment, and it has remained closed since. The fate of the other two refineries follows a similar pattern of stalled rehabilitation under the previous ownership structure.
Prof. Iledare’s analysis suggests the path forward requires decoupling sentiment from strategy. If disciplined value creation replaces sentimental asset management, this moment could redefine how Nigeria oversees its strategic energy infrastructure. The significance extends beyond individual plants, pointing to the necessity of comprehensive reforms to ensure long-term sector viability and national energy security.
