By ABUJA, NIGERIA – In a powerful message on the theme: Total Restoration, delivered at the Abuja Special Holy Ghost Service on Saturday morning, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), urged Nigerians to support the local refining of petroleum products, highlighting the vital role of the Dangote Refinery and cautioning against continued reliance on fuel importation.
“Before our president came in, we have been having financial problems, but the major reason we were having it was because a lot of money was being spent in importing petrol,” Adeboye said to thousands of worshippers.
“How can we be importing petrol when we have it in abundance here?” he asked, his words stirring murmurs of agreement from the congregation.
The RCCG leader recounted the billions of naira wasted on attempts to revive the nation’s refineries, which have yet to produce results.
“We spent billions of naira on our refineries; they didn’t work, so we continued importing. That was why when the president came in, he cancelled the money they were using to import petrol, and we were all rejoicing, saying thank God,” Adeboye stated.
According to Pastor Adeboye, those who previously profited from the fuel importation scheme were unhappy with the president’s decision, and their influence contributed to the rapid depreciation of the naira.
“Those who were making money from petrol importation were angry, and they created a problem. All of a sudden, the naira went down fast,” he said, attributing this economic turmoil to those resisting local refining initiatives.
Adeboye also shared how he and others had prayed fervently for Nigeria’s economy. “We prayed and God intervened,” he continued, highlighting his belief that divine intervention had prevented an even worse economic outcome.
“If God hadn’t intervened, a dollar would have been N10,000 by now, the way it was going down,” he remarked, emphasising the need for continued prayers to stabilise the economy.
The cleric lauded Aliko Dangote’s initiative to build a refinery, a project he said was crucial for the nation’s economic stability and energy security.
Aliko Dangote
“God raised somebody who said he would build a refinery on his own, and he did,” Adeboye said, noting that the entrepreneur had faced challenges acquiring crude oil for refining locally, initially being forced to import crude from the United States.
The octogenarian went on to describe how local stakeholders have resisted allowing Dangote, whom he described as someone of different faith, but a bonafide Nigerian, to sell the products at a competitive rate. “Some of us prayed, and God intervened, and they said they will give him crude oil but will decide how much he will sell.
Some people said they will sue him and use the law to force him to sell that way because they want to keep on importing oil from abroad,” he explained, expressing frustration over the barriers to Dangote’s operations.
Reflecting on the nation’s troubled refining history, Adeboye was candid. “We have four refineries, poured all kinds of money into them, but none are working,” he lamented. “Now someone built a refinery to be producing oil, and they said they won’t allow him to sell. We need to pray o!” he exclaimed, his voice resonating with urgency.
Adeboye concluded by reiterating his impartial stance, stating that his comments were not political but a matter of national interest.
“This has nothing to do about politics; I am not a politician and will never be one. That is not my calling,” he said, urging Nigerians to unite in prayer for the success of local initiatives like the Dangote Refinery to secure the nation’s future.
Dangote refinery
Thinking in the same line, the Chairman of the Crude Oil Refineries Owners Association of Nigeria (CORAN), Mr Momoh Oyarekhua, has said that Nigerian local refineries should be protected from unfair competition against importers and international petroleum traders in line with provisions of the PIA laws section 317 (8-9).
He made the observation while speaking on recent developments in the Petroleum industry with regard to pricing, product quality issues, and accusations of monopoly against Dangote.
While on the Channels Television Business Morning show monitored in Lagos, Oyarekhua insisted that local refineries were not being fairly treated or encouraged.
Reacting to the questions posed to him, Oyarekhua said “Regarding these issues such as pricing, Dangote perceived monopoly, quality of products and sundry challenges facing the industry, CORAN thinks that people are not being fair to the local refiners and it is an effort to frustrate local refining in Nigeria”
On the quality of imported petroleum products, he stated that there are no doubts that there are possibilities of adulterated products being shipped into Nigeria and that there was need for government and the regulators to checkmate and discourage the incidences of importation of petroleum products below specified quality standards and also stop importation with the view to urgently allow quality locally refined products to thrive
“We see the importation of low-quality products as an effort to frustrate our local refining in Nigeria. The truth is that if products are being imported into Nigeria to compete against products that are produced by refineries in Nigeria, there won’t be healthy competition.
“Some of the things Dangote has said are quite very true. I mean, products have been blended and we are aware”
On the issue of pricing, Oyarekhua noted that pricing is subject to the FX situation of the country, and the constant instability in the market is impacting the stability of product pricing adversely.
“There is the FX element which we are all aware of. Today, FX has been going up and down and it has been very unstable. At the parallel market level, it is about 1,700, something 700 plus, depending on who you are buying from,m, and the price has been fluctuating. These are the factors that are regulating the price of refined products and we all know what the impacts are
“If you go and benchmark this using Platt and looking at the petrol index in Platt, anybody today who says that he can import any product into Nigeria for less than 900 naira, the person must be questioned because this is an international market, is not anything that is hidden, the calculations are there”.
He noted that local refineries are facing significant frustrations due to low and zero incentives from government.
“What we are doing today, nobody is giving us incentives, there is no incentive to the refiners even recently the president said that we should be supplied crude, but none of us has been supplied Crude.
“Nobody is even discussing with the modular refineries owners. These issues are very discouraging and frustrating. We have been in this industry now for seven years and it is all frustration and more frustration.
“We need some form of support from the government, and we do hope that this support we hope for will come even as I guess our hope now should hinge more on the regulators,” he stated.
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