Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, has disclosed the plan by his organisation to sue foreign contractors handling the repair of Nigeria’s oil refineries.
He disclosed this while speaking on Channels TV’s political programme, Sunday Politics.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, faces energy challenges, with all its state-owned refineries non-operational.
The country is heavily reliant on imported refined petroleum products, with the state-run NNPCL being the major importer of the essential commodities.
On Sunday, it released a statement acknowledging that there was crisis in the energy sector, expressing fears that it might not be able to carry on the supply of the products as a result of the challenges in the sector.
However, Falana rubbished this claim by the NNPCL and urged the government to come out clean if it wanted to increase the pump price of PMS.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria called on Nigerians, especially the media and the civil society organisations to step up and expose the fraud in the petroleum sector, arguing that something was happening there that no one was talking about.
The contracts for the repair of the country’s refineries was awarded during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
However, the date for the commencement of operations have been moved several times in the past year.
“I lead an organisation that has already decided to engage the service of engineers to go to Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna to find out the state of the contracts.
“The two refineries in Portharcourt, the Buhari administration awarded the contract for $1.5 billion, for Warri and Kaduna, $1.4 billion. We cannot afford a situation where the foreign contractors mess up the country.
“So we want to sue those contractors if there is another postponement of the commencement date in the refining of crude oil in those four refineries.
“It is not the business of the NNPCL except there is more to it than what we are seeing. It’s not its job in fixing the refineries, why is the NNPCL changing the date?” He said.
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