Is Port Harcourt refinery the new Nigeria Air? By Farooq A. Kperogi

I decided to fact-check the buzz about the Port Harcourt Refinery supposedly springing back to life, so I reached out to an oil industry expert friend of mine.

After all, if this miracle were true, it’d easily be the best plot twist in Nigeria’s story since Jollof Rice dethroned its competitors.

My petrol industry expert friend said he’d ask a friend of his who works at the refinery to verify the claims.

Instead of a wordy explanation or even a simple “yes” or “no,” he said the Port Harcourt Refinery guy responded with a single, devastatingly eloquent gesture: he sent him a picture of Nigeria Air.

“I am still trying to work out what he was trying to tell me🤔!” he wrote.

Reader, I think we both know the translation: dreams may take flight, but some never leave the runway.

Seriously, though, at this rate, to not give up on Nigeria is to be a masochist with a superabundant love for perpetual emotional self-flagellation.