Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said Nigeria’s state-owned refineries should be privatized, citing the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s acknowledgment that billions of dollars spent rehabilitating the Port Harcourt Refinery failed to make it profitable.
In a statement posted Thursday on social media platform X, Atiku said the oil company’s admission validated his long-standing argument that continued public investment in the refineries was economically unjustifiable.
The state oil company said this week that despite spending about $1.5 billion on rehabilitating the Port Harcourt Refinery, the facility remains unprofitable. NNPCL Group Chief Executive Officer Bayo Ojulari said operations at the refineries were halted to prevent further losses.
“We were running at a monumental loss to Nigeria,” Ojulari said Wednesday, adding that the company was spending heavily on operations and contractors while “leaking away value.”
Reacting, Atiku said the disclosure confirmed that public funds had been wasted on facilities that continue to produce no petrol.
“This belated admission validates my long-held position that Nigeria’s refineries should be privatized,” Atiku said, arguing that billions of naira have been spent on salaries and maintenance without tangible output.
He said decades of turnaround maintenance had consumed vast public resources without resolving operational challenges, exposing deficiencies in technical capacity and financial discipline.
Atiku, who was the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 election, said he had long advocated selling the refineries but was previously accused of seeking to transfer public assets to associates.
“Today, the facts have caught up with the rhetoric,” he said.
He also criticized what he described as politically driven attempts to revive the refineries, arguing that economic policy should not be shaped by political pressure.
Atiku said Nigeria would have been better served by selling the refineries before the latest rehabilitation effort, adding that any proposed arrangements involving foreign partners risk repeating past failures.
