The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in the 2023 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, has slammed the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL over the move to hand over the newly-repaired Port Harcourt refinery to private entities.
Rather, the former vice president disclosed that the refinery should have been sold before the repairs to avoid debt.
He noted that the country’s oil firm must explain to Nigerians what they stood to gain by handing over the refinery to a private firm.
In a post on his X platform, the former Vice President disclosed that all his suggestions fell on deaf ears.
He wrote: “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” he wrote.
