By Toba Owojaiye
Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has delivered a damning verdict on Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, declaring them “practically dead” and unfit for any meaningful future operations. With a sweeping tone of finality, the billionaire industrialist cast fresh doubt over the prospects of reviving the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries, long symbols of Nigeria’s oil sector dysfunction.
While hosting members of the Global CEO Africa delegation from the Lagos Business School at his $19 billion Lekki-based Dangote Petroleum Refinery, the cement-to-sugar magnate bluntly stated that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC)’s refineries “have absorbed nearly $18 billion without producing results.” He questioned the logic of continual government spending on what he likened to “modernizing a 40-year-old car”, outdated, inefficient, and incompatible with current global standards.
Truth Live News can confirm that Dangote’s refinery, now operating at a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day and producing over 50% Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), has rapidly emerged as the country’s single most important downstream player, a development that has reshaped Nigeria’s fuel supply dynamics and, critics say, effectively created a private monopoly in the petroleum sector.
“We had to return the government refineries in 2007 after we acquired them because of administrative changes. A new MD told President Yar’Adua that they would get them working again. That never happened,” Dangote recalled, highlighting the entrenched inefficiency that has defined the NNPC facilities for decades.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has also weighed in, echoing Dangote’s skepticism. He revealed that even international oil giants like Shell had declined offers to run the refineries, branding them economically unsalvageable. “They won’t even sell for $200 million as scrap,” Obasanjo warned recently, accusing successive administrations of throwing over $2 billion into the facilities post-privatization reversal, with nothing to show for it.
Since his refinery came online in 2024, Dangote’s personal net worth has surged by over $7 billion, placing him well above his continental peers and making him one of the ten most influential private oil magnates globally. The refinery’s dominance has displaced fuel importers, sidelined government-run facilities, and drawn quiet concern from economists over the potential abuse of market control.
Despite the government’s approval of $1.4 billion for Port Harcourt and hundreds of millions more for Warri and Kaduna refineries, all remain inactive, fueling suspicions that public funds are being funneled into a black hole while a private operator takes the crown.
With the most recent shutdown of the Port Harcourt refinery, just months after it was ceremonially declared operational by former NNPC GMD Mele Kyari, voices from the private sector and civil society have grown louder. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), alongside leading economists, is now urging the federal government to consider selling the decrepit plants as scrap, reinvesting proceeds into modular refineries or renewable energy transitions.
“Dangote speaks with the clarity of someone who knows no one can challenge him now,” said an energy analyst who declined to be named. “His refinery is not just working, it is redefining the balance of power in Nigeria’s oil sector.
Government is no longer the key player.”
Attempts to reach the Nigerian National Petroleum Company for comment were unsuccessful, with official communication lines failing to respond. Industry insiders suggest internal frustration is mounting, as political promises to “revive the refineries” ring increasingly hollow.
Dangote’s remarks and soaring refinery success paint a sobering picture: a state that has all but surrendered its downstream oil ambitions to a single private player. For a country long obsessed with state ownership of critical infrastructure, the unspoken truth may be that the age of nationalized refining is over and Aliko Dangote is its undertaker.
The question now isn’t whether the government can fix its refineries, but whether it even wants to, or dares to, challenge the man who has done what Nigeria could not for 40 years. As the monopoly tightens, the nation watches, refineries rust, and a new oil emperor reigns.