Former Vice President and 2023 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL)’s decision to hand over the Port Harcourt refinery to a private firm for operation and maintenance.
Atiku, in a statement posted on X, questioned the rationale behind the move, emphasizing that the NNPCL should have considered selling the refinery to avoid accumulating additional debt for the country.
He urged the NNPCL to provide transparent explanations regarding the benefits that would accrue to Nigeria and its citizens through this new privatization approach.
“I have always advocated for far-reaching reforms to reposition Nigeria’s oil sector and, indeed, other sectors of our economy. In particular, I had consistently called on the Buhari administration to break its monopoly in all infrastructure sectors, including the refineries, and give investors, both foreign and domestic, a larger role in funding and management,“ he said.
“My position has been well laid out in The Atiku Plan (2018) and My Covenant With Nigerians (2022). But our suggestions fell on deaf ears. First, they refused to privatize the refineries. They left them idle for years while paying humongous staff salaries.
“Then, they contracted a loan of US$1.5 billion for rehabilitation. Now, the current administration wants to turn the rehabilitated refinery to private concerns for operation and maintenance!
“Without prejudice to the terms of the agreement between the NNPC and the private operators, it would undoubtedly have been better if the NNPC had sold the refinery, pre-rehabilitation, to avoid the burden of debt.
“The @nnpclimited must explain to the satisfaction of Nigerians what benefits its newly discovered approach to privatisation will confer on Nigeria and Nigerians. -AA”
