By Ishaya Ibrahim
Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar, has slammed the federal government for wasting Nigeria’s money in the last six years on the four refineries only to turn around belatedly to begin moves towards privatizing them.
Atiku’s reaction follows announcement by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to hand over the Port Harcourt refinery to a private operator.
Atiku recalled that in 2018, he proposed in his campaign manifesto the sale of the refineries, a move the government rejected, allowing the assets to idle away with a concomitant cost of paying salaries of staff for producing nothing.
The former Vice President said the worst part of the government incompetence was securing a loan of $1.5 billion (N1.5 trillion) used in rehabilitating the refineries only for the government to have a rethink that keeping the refineries as government assets was not a wise move.
Atiku wondered what changed, while demanding explanation from NNPCL on how Nigeria’s interest will be protected with the new arrangement.
He said in the post: “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. 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.”
