The President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has expressed doubt over the future functionality of Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, despite years of investments.

He said the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries — managed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) — have consumed about $18 billion in public funds without delivering results.

Speaking on Thursday during a facility tour with members of the Global CEO Africa group from Lagos Business School at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lekki, Lagos, Dangote stated that he did not believe the facilities would ever function as expected.

“The refineries that we bought before, which were owned by Nigeria, were doing about 22 per cent of PMS. We bought the refineries in January 2007. Then we had to return them to the government because there was a change of government,” he said.

He recounted how former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua reversed the sale of the refineries made during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure.

Dangote said he and his partners had purchased the facilities but returned them after Yar’Adua was advised that the assets were undervalued.

“As of today, they have spent about $18 billion on those refineries, and they are still not working. I don’t think, and I doubt very much, if they will work,” he said.

Comparing the situation to efforts to modernise obsolete technology, Dangote likened the Turnaround Maintenance of the refineries to upgrading a decades-old car with a modern engine.

“Even if you change the engine, the body will not be able to take the shock of that new technology,” he added.

The comments follow earlier warnings by former President Obasanjo, who also questioned the viability of NNPC’s refining operations.

Obasanjo revealed he once approached international oil companies, including Shell, to manage the refineries, but they declined.

He maintained that NNPC lacks the capacity to run them and criticised the decision to reverse the 2007 privatisation.

“I told my successor that the refineries will not work and when you want to sell them, you will not get anybody to buy them at $200 million as scrap,” Obasanjo had said.

In recent months, two of the refineries — Port Harcourt and Warri — were briefly reopened by the NNPC but later shut down again. Critics, including the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, have urged the government to sell the facilities or convert their proceeds into modular refineries.

Public records show that over $2 billion has been spent on the refineries in recent years. In 2021, $1.4 billion was approved for Port Harcourt’s rehabilitation, $897 million for Warri, and $586 million for Kaduna. Between 2013 and 2017, $396 million went into turnaround maintenance alone. Despite the investments, the refineries have remained largely inactive.