Former Vice President of Nigeria and elder statesman, Atiku Abubakar, has strongly criticized the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) following its admission that efforts to reopen the Port Harcourt Refinery have proven to be a waste of scarce national resources.
In a pointed statement, Atiku highlighted that approximately $1.5 billion has been expended on the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery, yet the facility has failed to produce a single litre of petrol for the benefit of Nigerians.
He described this as a glaring example of mismanagement and economic recklessness under public ownership.
“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,” Atiku stated. “This belated admission validates my long-held position that Nigeria’s refineries should be privatised.”
The former Vice President emphasized that decades of repeated “turnaround maintenance” and massive public investments in Nigeria’s state-owned refineries including Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna have consistently yielded no tangible results.
He pointed out that billions of naira continue to be spent on salaries and upkeep for facilities that produce nothing, describing the situation as economically indefensible and a betrayal of public trust.
Atiku noted that the Tinubu administration’s apparent recognition of this reality marks a step toward acknowledging an inevitable truth: pouring public funds into moribund refineries is unsustainable.
He argued that Nigeria would have been better positioned if the refineries had been sold before rehabilitation, avoiding ballooning debt and the depreciation of national assets into liabilities.