Ajimobi inaugurates ‘biggest oil refinery in West Africa’

Abiola Ajimobi, governor of Oyo state, has inaugurated the Rom Oil Mills Limited, a subsidiary company of Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc.

The oil refinery and margarine company, which is the biggest in Sub-Saharan Africa, is located in Ibadan, the capital of the state.

The governor pledged that his administration would do all within its powers to ensure that the state is the preferred destination of investors in Nigeria.

Rom Oil is expected to refine crude palm kernel oil, crude palm oil and crude soybean oil into refined oil and distilled fatty acids.

Speaking at the ceremony, Ajimobi said the effect of the employment generation that the company would give the people of the state was his own idea of stomach infrastructure.

“This indeed is our idea of the so-called stomach infrastructure. We thank the management of the company for their implicit trust and confidence in our state. You have indeed vindicated our stance,” he said.

“The cumulative effects of his administration’s developmental drive and consequent influx of investors into our state would result in employment generation and empowerment of the people.

“It would positively impact millions of our people, as it is the best and most dignifying stomach infrastructure ever.”

Ajimobi described the establishment of the firm, a-400-metric-tonnes-per-day universal refinery, as another testimony to his administration’s leadership and “investors-baiting” policies.

He described the development as the dividends of the peaceful atmosphere which his administration brought back to the state at its inception.

“If you add the largest Shoprite outlet in West Africa that has been recently sited in our state, you will understand how a secure and peaceful atmosphere, as well as an environmentally-conducive state, is essential for employment-generation and indeed the economic development of the people,” he said.

“Add all these to the rebirth of night life in the capital city, as manifest in the many hospitality industries that have sprung up in the nooks and crannies of Oyo state, you will realise why development experts say that peace and security are the foundation of any society.”

Speaking at the occasion, Akinwumi Adesina, minister of agriculture, commended the Ajimobi administration, saying the governor had done a lot to help farmers in the state.

Adesina said that the federal government had distributed 351,000 high-quality palm seedlings to farmers in the state, thanking the governor for ensuring that the seedlings got to the end users.