The scheduled sale of Nigeria's 4 refineries next year is a well-designed scam calculated to hand over the country's premium downstream assets to associates and fronts of the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who is also representing the financial interests of President Goodluck Jonathan.
According to several senior officials at the ministry, four of the minister's friends have been penciled in to emerge as preferred bidders by “any means necessary” even as the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE) has announced its readiness to commence the sales next year.
The “preferred” buyers is Mr. Jide Omokore, the multi-billionaire PDP figure who has received numerous juicy deals since Ms. Alison-Madueke was made Minister of Petroleum Resources by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2010. Mr. Omokore is the chairman of Energy Resources Group, whose subsidiary, Atlantic Energy Drilling Concept Limited, was involved in a highly scandalous operatorship take-over of the oil mining
licenses (OMLs) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in 2011.
Mr. Omokore, whose private jet is regularly put at the disposal of Ms. Alison-Madueke (as do jets by her other fronts and associates), famously funded an obscene wedding in Dubai for his son, Oluwatosin, last June. According to some estimates, the wedding cost corresponded $10 million.
Meanwhile Kola Aluko was involved in the controversial OML operatorship deal through his company, Septa Energy, a subsidiary of Seven Energy. While Mr. Omokore's company got oil bloc numbers 26, 30, 34, and 42, Igho Salome's Taleveras got OMLs 4, 38 and 41. In the questionable deal, Shell divested its operatorship in the OMLs. Legelly, the ownership automatically reverted to the NNPC which manages oil assets on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria. At first, the NNPC had transferred its operatorship to its exploration subsidiary, Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC).
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