Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Olawale Olaopa, Ibikunle Ogundari, Mike Awoleye, and Willie Siyanbola
prices was thus squandered on imported petrol. Today, the
country's own refineries have gone to seed, thanks to the corrupt
contractors who were charged with their repair. A recent report
estimated that at least US$400 million has been pumped into
rehabilitating the refineries in the last six years. That money
vanished with no trace of enhanced capacity.
Government efforts to privatize the facilities out of trouble are
progressing slowly. In order to encourage more international interest,
President Obasanjo considers it essential to raise fuel retail prices to a
commercially attractive level, at which point the market will take over
the supply problem. Supporters argued that this policy is already
beginning to pay off, with a consortium of domestic banks recently
announcing plans to build a new 12,000-barrel-per-day facility in
Niger-Delta Cross River state.
In summary, government involvement in the downstream sector of
the Nigerian petroleum industry, over the past quarter of a century
have led to predictable failures (Braide, 1997). These include:
• low capacity utilization of Nigeria’s state-owned refineries and
petrochemicals plants in Kaduna, Port Harcourt, and Warri;
• sorry state of disrepair, neglect, and repeated vandalisation of
the state-ran petroleum product pipelines and oil movement
infrastructure nationwide, the collateral damage of
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