A former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s admission that the $1.5bn rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery was a waste of scarce resources validates his long-standing call for the privatisation of Nigeria’s state-owned refineries.
Atiku made the assertion in a statement shared via his X handle on Sunday, reacting to comments attributed to the state oil company that the Port Harcourt facility is not profitable despite $1.5bn having been spent on rehabilitating it.
NNPCL Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari, speaking on Wednesday, disclosed that the state-owned refineries were operating at a “monumental loss” to the country, prompting his leadership team to halt operations to prevent further value erosion.
“On the refineries, Nigerians were angry. A lot of money has been spent, and expectations were very high. So we were under extreme pressure, extreme pressure,” Ojulari said.
“The first thing that became clear, and I want to say this very clearly, is that we were running at a monumental loss to Nigeria. We were just wasting money. I can say that confidently now.
“We were spending a lot of money on operations, a lot of money on contractors. But when you look at the net, we were just leaking away value,” he said.
Reacting, Atiku said the admission, though belated, confirms that continued public funding of moribund refineries is economically unjustifiable.
“After gulping $1.5bn, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has now admitted that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery is a waste of scarce resources.
“This belated admission validates my long-held position that Nigeria’s refineries should be privatised,” he said.
“It is instructive that the Tinubu administration has finally come to terms with an inevitable truth: pouring public funds into moribund refineries is economically indefensible,” the former vice president added.
He criticised what he described as the payment of billions of naira in salaries to facilities that produce no petrol, arguing that such spending does not serve the national interest.
Atiku recalled that he had consistently advocated the privatisation of the refineries but was previously attacked and accused of seeking 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 him, decades of turnaround maintenance had consumed billions of dollars without results, exposing weaknesses in capacity, technical expertise and financial discipline.
He further argued that the most recent effort to revive the refineries was driven by political pressure rather than economic logic, stressing that politics should not substitute for sound policy.
Atiku said any proposed refinery arrangement, including those involving foreign partners, should be discontinued, as they merely replicate previously failed approaches.
“Nigeria would have been better served by selling the refineries pre-rehabilitation to avoid ballooning debt and the steady depreciation of what have effectively become liabilities,” he added.
