The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), yesterday, stated that it would no longer be involved in the management of the country’s refineries after their ongoing rehabilitation.

He said, “We are going to get an O&M contract, NNPC won’t run it. We are going to get a firm that will guarantee that this plant would run for some time. We want to try a different model of getting this refinery to run. And we are going to apply this process for the running of the other two refineries.”

He explained that the plan, ultimately, is to get private partners to invest in the refineries and get them to run on the NLNG model where the shareholders would be free to decide the fate of the refineries going forward.

Kyari stated that this model, which is totally different from the previous approach, would guarantee the desired outcome for the refineries.

Furthermore, the NNPC’s helmsman stated that the decision to finally end the fuel subsidy regime was in the interest of ordinary Nigerians as it would free up funds for the various tiers of government to develop basic infrastructure in the education, health, transport, and other sectors for their benefit.

He said, “Subsidy is elitist because it is the elites that benefit from it. They are the ones that have SUVs, four, five cars in their garages. The masses should be the ones to benefit. There are many things wrong with the under-recovery because it makes us to supply more than is needed. This makes the under-recovery to be bloated because we unwittingly subsidize fuel for the whole of West Africa. That has to stop.”