BY SIMON       EBEGBULEM

BENIN—A member of the  House of Representatives and former President of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, Mr. Peter Akpatason, has advocated the adoption of joint ownership of the country’s refineries rather than outright sale, as being proposed by the Federal Government.

Akpatason, representing Akoko Edo federal constituency of Edo State in the House, also described as laughable, the agitation that lawmakers who dumped Peoples Democratic Party, PDP to All Progressives Congress, APC, would lose their seats, saying that defection was a global practice in any democracy all over the world.
Speaking to newsmen in Benin City, weekend, he argued that the planned sale of the refineries would not help the sector, “rather, it will help a few pockets, because people are opening companies these days just to bid for the refineries and at the end of the day they will not deliver.

“Today, we have private media outfits like AIT. The question is, did we sell NTA for AIT to come on board? The answer is no. NTA was left there, it is still there functioning. NTA had no choice but to wake up. So, why don’t you bring in private refineries, let them compete with Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and if the NNPC refineries are not ready, let them die a natural death.
“Why not adopt the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, model also? Nigeria owns 49 per cent, private investors own 51 per cent and they manage this business together.”

If Shell, for instance, is the Managing Director, NNPC is Human Resources Director on behalf of the Nigerian people and that model is working, so why don’t we adopt same model for the refineries? Why are we running away from a model that is working and we want to sell to traders, who have no known pedigree in petroleum refining?
“If privatising becomes very necessary after all the options, we will support privatization, but before then, we must look deep into all the options that are available except there is no other option. The we can sell”