Ex-presidential candidate seeks legal status for cottage refineries

Yahaya Ndu says Nigeria should stop destroying artisanal refineries in the Niger Delta and instead bring them into the legal economy. The former presidential candidate argues that local refining, not renewed debate over fuel subsidies, offers the more direct answer to the country’s energy crisis.

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It is an insult to our collective intelligence for us to be talking about whether you should bring back fuel subsidy or not.

Ndu condemned security agencies’ destruction of modular refining sites labelled illegal oil-bunkering operations. He said the government should assist operators, monitor their work, standardise their products, provide access to crude and offer technical support while ensuring they do not pollute the environment.

“It is an insult to our collective intelligence for us to be talking about whether you should bring back fuel subsidy or not,” Ndu said. He argued that local refining had prevented fuel shortages on the Biafran side during Nigeria’s civil war and claimed that the government had since destroyed more than 5,000 cottage refineries.

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Now, in contemporary Nigeria, more than 5,000 cottage refineries have been destroyed by the government. I have advocated consistently that all these so-called illegal refineries should be legalised, assist the operators, monitor them, standardise their products, give them access to crude and technological know-how, and ensure they don’t pollute the environment.

The former African Renaissance Party candidate also criticised an approach that relies on huge refinery projects while suppressing smaller indigenous initiatives. “What makes them illegal? It is not only when you build gigantic refineries like Dangote’s that you can refine crude,” he said.

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What makes them illegal? It is not only when you build gigantic refineries like Dangote’s that you can refine crude.

Ndu linked the refinery debate to a wider argument about political inclusion. He urged major parties to use the substitution window in the Independent National Electoral Commission timetable to give their presidential tickets to South-East candidates. Citing the post-June 12, 1993 consensus that moved major-party tickets to the South-West, he said the South-East deserved similar treatment and argued that democracy depended on broad participation and consensus.

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Following the annulment of the June 1993 election, major political parties zoned the presidency to the South-West. President Bola Tinubu was a beneficiary of that consensus through NADECO. The South-East has suffered a thousand times over; why is it that now that it should be the turn of the South-East, we start to hear issues of competence? Democracy is essentially about mass participation and consensus, not individual talents alone.