President Bola Tinubu has said the petroleum refinery in Port Harcourt will start working by December 2023.
Tinubu in a statement by presidential spokesman, Dele Alake, said the “Port Harcourt refineries will start production by December 2023 after the completion of the ongoing rehabilitation contract between NNPCL and Italian firm, Maire Tecnimont SpA.”
The president met with labour unions on Wednesday at the State House in Abuja to halt the nationwide protest that started on Wednesday.
Part of labour’s demand is the government’s commitment to getting local refineries to work, an objective that has gulped about N11.35 trillion in the last 10 years.
The resuscitation of the refinery, if completed as promised by Tinubu, will lessen Nigeria’s reliance on oil importation and dependence on foreign refineries.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has been working to revamp the refineries, which were shut down entirely in 2021 and produced little or no fuel over the past decade.
The 9th National Assembly in May, said the Warri and Port Harcourt refineries were under rehabilitation and recommended that the Kaduna refinery should also be subjected to such treatment.
In different parts of Nigeria where protests were held, some labour unions called for a reversal of petrol subsidy removal, a decision Tinubu announced during his presidential inaugural address in May, leading to a spike in food, transportation prices and overall cost of living.
Although Tinubu said Nigeria has saved over N1trillion from funds that should have gone into payment for subsidy but petrol price has risen by over 100% from the previous N168 to N580 per litre. The labour unions said they want an upward review of the minimum wage to reflect the economic reality in the country.
Nigeria’s annual inflation rate rose to 22.79 per cent in June from 22.41 per cent in the previous month, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The statistics office said the June inflation rate showed an increase of 0.38 per cent points when compared to May 2023 headline inflation rate.
To check the high inflation, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in May, raised its benchmark lending rate to 18.5 per cent to contain the inflationary pressure.
During a presidential broadcast on the state of the economy earlier this week, President Tinubu acknowledged the economic “turbulence” but insisted that it is necessary to position Nigeria to “take advantage of a future that awaits her”.
