Former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, has criticised the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) over its reported admission that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery is no longer economically viable, describing the development as a vindication of his long-held call for the privatisation of Nigeria’s refineries.
In a statement shared on his official X handle yesterday, Atiku said the acknowledgement by the national oil company, after spending about $1.5 billion on the refinery, confirms that continued public investment in the country’s moribund refineries is a waste of scarce resources. “At last, the Tinubu administration has come to terms with an inevitable truth: pouring public funds into moribund refineries is economically indefensible”, Atiku stated.
He lamented that despite billions of dollars spent over the years on so-called turnaround maintenance, Nigeria’s refineries have remained largely non-functional, producing no petrol while still incurring huge salary and overhead costs. “Paying billions in salaries to facilities that produce not a single litre of petrol does not serve the national interest,” he stated.
Atiku recalled that he had consistently argued for the privatisation of Nigeria’s refineries over the years, a position he said attracted severe criticism and allegations that he intended to sell public assets to associates. “For years, I advanced this patriotic position and was vilified and accused of plotting to sell public assets to ‘friends.’ Today, the facts have caught up with the rhetoric”, he said.
According to the former vice-president, decades of failed rehabilitation efforts have exposed fundamental weaknesses in Nigeria’s refinery management, including a lack of technical capacity, financial discipline and effective oversight.
He further criticised what he described as politically motivated attempts to revive the refineries, arguing that such decisions were driven by pressure rather than sound economic reasoning. “The latest push to ‘revive’ these refineries was driven by political pressure, not economic sense. Politics must never substitute for sound, transformative policy,” he said.
Atiku also warned against entering into new refinery agreements, including partnerships with foreign firms, saying such arrangements would merely replicate models that have failed in the past.
He maintained that Nigeria would have been better-off selling the refineries before embarking on expensive rehabilitation projects, noting that the continued investments have only increased public debt and turned the facilities into liabilities.
