$1.5bn spending: Atiku calls refinery revival wasteful, demands privatisation

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has renewed his call for the privatisation of Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, saying the continued rehabilitation of the facilities, including the Port Harcourt Refinery, amounts to a waste of scarce national resources.

He noted that over $1.5 billion has already been spent on attempts to reopen the Port Harcourt Refinery with little to show for it.

In a statement on Sunday, Atiku said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s (NNPCL) reported admission that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery may no longer be viable validates his long-held position that government should divest from managing refineries.

“Paying billions in salaries to facilities that produce not a single litre of petrol does not serve the national interest,” he said.

The 2023 presidential candidate argued that successive turnaround maintenance efforts had consumed billions of dollars with little or no results, exposing what he described as gaps in technical capacity, financial discipline and operational efficiency.

He maintained that previous attempts to rehabilitate the refineries were driven more by political considerations than sound economic planning.

“Politics must never substitute for sound, transformative policy,” he stated.

Atiku criticised ongoing plans to revive the refineries through partnerships, including with foreign investors, warning that such arrangements could repeat past failures.

He instead advocated outright privatisation, suggesting the facilities should have been sold before rehabilitation to prevent rising debts and the continued depreciation of assets he described as liabilities.

The former vice president added that his position, which he said he had consistently promoted over the years, was often misinterpreted as an attempt to sell public assets to associates, but insisted recent developments had proven the argument for reform.

His comments come amid broader national debates over the future of Nigeria’s ageing refineries and the government’s strategy for achieving energy security and reducing fuel import dependence.