Port Harcourt Refinery: Between Armchair Analysts & Journalists 

BY SIMBO OLORUNFEMI

This morning, one of the Anchors on the Arise TV Morning Show took on the matter of the Port Harcourt Refinery, even though that was not the issue at hand, as prop for his unending battle with ‘Journalists who visited the refinery and reported that it was working’. 

That won’t be the first instance. The trolling has gone on for a long while on X, starting from when reports that the refinery had become operational. He took on every guest who appeared on the programme, unless the person would agree to his own position that the refinery was not working.

When the NNPC decided to suspend operations, he took it as validation of his unverified assumption that the refinery was never operational, claiming that he has been proved right, lambasting Journalists who visited the refinery and reported it to be functioning.

In the last few days, he has been on a roll, with numerous tweets, trolling the Journalists, throwing jabs at my friend and professional colleague who works for another TV Station.

This morning, he took to gesticulating wildly on TV, mocking BKO for filing a report attesting to a working refinery on the strength of the flare he saw. As we know, experts cite the presence of flare as proof that a refinery is operational.

The question to ask him then is this – What has Babajide Kolade-otitoju done by reporting what he saw on his visit to Warri? What have Journalists who visited Port Harcourt Refinery done wrong by reporting what they saw?

How can you sit in a studio in Lagos and assume to know what is on the ground? A senior Business Journalist with over 30 years experience who works in the same TV station as this fellow was part of the team that visited the Port Harcourt Refinery. The TV station he works for reported that the refinery was working. Why has he not taken it up with his bosses there? What with this unprofessional and irresponsible attack on Journalists who visited a place you did not visit, and reported what they saw?

Is it only Journalists who visited the refinery? If the insinuation that the Journalists, even with audio-visual evidence presented, were compromised, what about the labour leaders, industry leaders and experts who visited the refinery and attested to the fact that it was working?

It is one thing to be cynical, it is another to insist that it is only your armchair configurations that are acceptable.

How does the fact that the Refineries are not in operation today invalidate the proof that the Refineries were indeed in operation at the time people visited them?

Contrary to the falsehood peddled, the current MD of NNPCL never said that the refinery never worked. His position was that “the decision to OPERATE the Port Harcourt Refinery prior to FULL REHABILITATION was ill-informed and sub-commercial.”

Is that not proof that the refinery were indeed operational, as was reported by the Journalists who visited? How does a man with no track record of anything meaningful in journalism even understand how these things work?

At no point did NNPC claim that the plant was fully operational, it stated then that operation, at less-than-full capacity, had only commenced in the smaller of the two plants in Port Harcourt, while work continued, to upscale production in the smaller refinery and finish rehabilitation works of the 150kbd plant.

So, the point is simple and straightforward – Was the Refinery in operation, as was reported by the Journalists? The answer is YES.

The Experts and Journalists who toured the refinery went through all the points, from operation to loading. Experts certified that the refinery was functional. Independent marketers testified to the fact that they loaded products (diesel and kerosene) from the refineries, while petrol was exclusively loaded by NNPC Retail arm.

The claim that the refinery was not operational and that Journalists who visited the place lied or misled the public is ridiculous and false.

Only yesterday, the Managing Director of NNPCL, Mr Bayo Ojulari, while speaking with the delegation from PENGASAAN restated this same position that the refinery was indeed operational, even if wasn’t at an optimal level, especially from the commercial point of view.

His words: “When I resumed, one of the first priorities I focused on was the refineries, to have a quick review, to see whether we could quickly fix it.

“What I found is that we were losing between N300 million to N500 million on a monthly basis in the overall refinery.

“Let’s take Port Harcourt. We were pumping about 950,000 barrels as cargo to go to the refinery. You know that kind of price.”

So, again, the Refinery was in operation at the time the Journalists visited. The decision to shut down operations until the full rehabilitation is completed cannot be an excuse to troll Journalists who visited and reported as they saw, just because it does not validate your bias and poorly cooked conspiracy theories.