Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer has disclosed plans to sell its four refineries by the end of the first quarter of 2014.

According to Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, plans are underway to privatise four state-owned oil refineries, including the two-unit 210,000 barrel-a-day Port Harcourt refinery.

“We would like to see major infrastructural entities such as refineries moving out of government hands into the private sector. Government do not want to be in the business of running major infrastructure entities,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Africa in London, adding that “…we haven’t done a very good job at it over all these years.”

CBN Deputy Governor, Financial Systems Stability, Dr. Kingsley Moghalu, while speaking at a meeting on Thursday with heads of Deposit Money Banks said the plan to sell the refineries was in line with the government’s drive to transform the nation’s economy rapidly in the next five years.

A presidential audit of the facilities submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012 had recommended that the refineries, which have a combined 445,000 barrel-a-day capacity, should be privatised within 18 months due to inadequate government funding and “sub-optimal performance.”

Moghalu posits that the Nigerian economy would receive a massive boost when the transformations in power, agricultural and oil and gas sectors were completed.

“The economic transformation of this country is gradually becoming a reality. I have said that I see a very different Nigeria in five years with the way we are going and with the transformations that are taking place in several aspects of the economy. Agriculture is one, power sector is another, and the move to get private investors take over refineries makes me believe that we are going to reposition Nigeria’s economy to be one that is actually based on real production and not wasting asset that is in oil,” Moghalu said.