Baba Negedu 
The Northern apex socio cultural and political organisation, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has said that the controversy surrounding the new Dangote Refinery and its inability to access the required amount of crude oil is a disincentive to domestic investors and is also sending wrong signals to foreign investors.
Owner of the refinery, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, and some stakeholders in the oil and gas sector have been having a back and forth over his inability to access crude.
But ACF in a statement, yesterday after some of its members visited the refinery, noted that they are worried following the emerging and “largely negative national and international debates and controversies on the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Industrial FZE (DPRPI)”.
The statement, signed by Prof Tukur Muhammad -Baba, the National Publicity Secretary of the Forum, said: “It is particularly distressing that some oil-related public and business entities like the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPC Ltd) and other agencies in the sector seem to make themselves the impression of purveying dissemination and misinformation about the Dangote Refinery.
“It is also most discomfiting but not surprising that there has emerged a thinly-veiled strategy to de-market the refinery by international oil interests that are obviously uncomfortable at being challenged at their game by a Nigerian, African and, to boot, a black person.
“Therefore, ACF strongly supports the on-going investigations by the National Assembly to establish the veracity of the claims and counter claims about the Dangote Refinery.
The investigations must accord fair hearing to all parties so as to reach amicable resolution of the claims and counter claims. An unhampered and transparent investigation would allow all parties in the controversy to resolve differences; and this way Dangote Refinery on its part, will be of tremendous economic benefit to Nigerians.”
According to the ACF, Dangote is a household name in Nigeria, Africa and beyond, “with the brand’s various commercial enterprises providing products, services and employment opportunities in Nigeria and beyond.
“That such a facility attracts controversy, envy and even sabotage from related industry or personal interests come as no surprise, as exemplified by the current unrelenting onslaught against DPRPI.
It was the needless controversies on the DPRPI that buoyed a delegation of ACF to visit the awe-inspiring complex in order to gain first-hand knowledge of the facility.”
