Atiku to FG: Nigeria’s refineries offer no good anymore, sell them off
By Folarin Ademosu
Opposition leader, Abubakar Atiku has asked the Federal Government of Nigeria to discontinue forthwith any proposed deal to revamp Nigeria’s ailing crude oil refineries. The former Nigerian vice president, Atiku, in a latest statement on Facebook, opined that the government ought not to have embarked on rehabilitating the refineries but, instead, sell them off to avoid “ballooning debt” and their “steady depreciation.”
“Any proposed refinery deal, including with foreign partners, should be discontinued, as it merely repeats failed models,” Atiku warned.
“Nigeria would have been better served by selling the refineries pre-rehabilitation to avoid ballooning debt and the steady depreciation of what have effectively become liabilities,” he adds.
According to Atiku – who as vice president oversaw the privatisation and sale of some national assests –, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s admittance to splurging $1.5bn on revamping Port Harcourt refinery “validates my long-held position that Nigeria’s refineries should be privatised.”
He adds, “It is instructive that the Tinubu administration has finally come to terms with an inevitable truth: pouring public funds into moribund refineries is economically indefensible. “Paying billions in salaries to facilities that produce not a single litre of petrol does not serve the national interest.
“For years, I advanced this patriotic position and was vilified and accused of plotting to sell public assets to “friends.”
“Today, the facts have caught up with the rhetoric. Decades of so-called turnaround maintenance have swallowed billions of dollars with nothing to show for it, exposing deep deficits in capacity, technical know-how, and financial discipline.”
