RismadarVoice Reporters, August 14, 2026
President Bola Tinubu has assured Nigerians that the country’s refineries will soon resume operations, saying his administration is working on a structural overhaul of the petroleum sector.
The president gave the assurance on Thursday when he received the leadership of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
The president said the government was focused not merely on getting refineries to operate but on ensuring that they became economically viable and delivered value to Nigerians.
“The refineries you mentioned are going to come back to work. We’re just building a very firm reset and structural reworking of the economics of it,” he said.
He said the mere presence of smoke or flames from a refinery would not necessarily mean that it was functioning effectively.
“Ordinary flame and smoke from a refinery doesn’t mean that it’s working until it’s profitable and yields the value for which it was built,” he said.
Mr Tinubu also said his administration had accepted responsibility for fixing the country’s economic challenges, regardless of the circumstances inherited from previous administrations.
“I’m not a man who will look back and blame everyone, because I’ve accepted the assets and liabilities of my predecessors. No matter what happened in the past years, it’s my responsibility now as President to fix it and make it work for the greatest common good of our population,” he said.
The president also expressed concern that the benefits of the government’s Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) initiative were not reaching commuters quickly enough.
He said the gains were largely going to truck owners and urged stakeholders in the transport sector to ensure that the savings from CNG were reflected in transport costs.
“Whatever benefit is coming from CNG is going into the pockets of truck owners. It’s not spreading as fast as I would like, but it should spread,” Mr Tinubu said.
The president also defended the removal of fuel subsidy, saying the government would soon publish details of how the savings were being utilised.
According to him, the savings were contributing to the payment of salaries by federal, state and local governments and funding major infrastructure projects.
He listed the Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kaduna, Abuja-Kano and Sokoto-Badagry highways among projects benefiting from the government’s financial reforms.
Mr Tinubu thanked NUPENG for its cooperation with the government and described the union as an important stakeholder in the Nigerian economy.
Earlier, NUPENG President Salimon Oladiti appealed to the president to intervene in the alleged casualisation of workers in the oil and gas industry, particularly in the upstream sector.
Mr Oladiti described the practice as unhealthy and said attempts by NUPENG and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) to address the issue with some oil companies had produced little result.
He urged the president to use his office to end the practice.
The NUPENG president also commended the administration for the rehabilitation and dualisation of federal highways, saying improved roads would make transportation safer for petroleum tanker drivers.
He, however, called for the revival of depots operated by the Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company (NPSC), saying functioning depots would complement efforts to revive the nation’s refineries.
Mr Oladiti suggested that the depots be handed over to private investors under an equity arrangement to ensure efficient management.
He also commended the government’s efforts to revive the Warri and Port Harcourt refineries through partnerships with Chinese firms, and urged the administration to extend similar attention to the country’s deteriorating petroleum storage infrastructure.
