Fixing All Refineries Will Bolster Job Creation, Earn Nigeria FX -PENGASSAN

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has disclosed that fixing all the state-owned refineries will provide primary and secondary jobs.

The association also called for diversification into exploring other mineral resources apart from crude oil to expand the country’s revenue base.

These were some of the resolutions reached according to the President of the association, Mr Festus Osifo, at the union’s National Executive Council meeting held on Thursday January 16, 2025, in Lagos.

Calling on the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and other relevant authorities to make all the refineries functional, Osifo argued that in addition to facilitating energy security, fixing the refineries

“We will also have the opportunity of getting a lot of foreign exchange when these refineries are working because the value chain is quite enormous.

“For us in PENGASSAN, we will continually push until all the refineries are working,” he said.

He also encouraged the Federal Government to harness other resources such as gold and bitumen, among others, to boost the country’s revenue.

“However, that expansion of our revenue base must be how to harness our material resources and our mineral resources.

“Nigeria is a country that is blessed extremely with huge mineral resources. Is it the bitumen that you have in Ondo? Is it the tin that you have in Jos? Is it the gold that you have in Zamfara and many parts of Nigeria?

“We can go on and on, but these are lying fallow. The way we can generate jobs is for us to tap into these material resources and not to export them as raw materials but to create value, to add value to them” he argued.