ABUJA — Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has mentioned the Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Firm Restricted’s (NNPCL) admission that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery is a waste of scarce sources validates his long-standing place that Nigeria’s refineries ought to be privatised.
Atiku made the assertion in an announcement posted on his Fb web page on Sunday, reacting to stories that the refinery had gulped about $1.5 billion with out producing petrol.
In keeping with him, the Tinubu administration’s acknowledgment marks a belated acceptance of an financial actuality he had persistently highlighted through the years — that continued public funding of moribund refineries is economically indefensible.
“It’s instructive that the administration has lastly come to phrases with an inevitable fact: pouring public funds into moribund refineries makes no financial sense,” Atiku mentioned. “Paying billions of naira in salaries to amenities that don’t produce a single litre of petrol doesn’t serve the nationwide curiosity.”
The previous vice chairman recalled that he had repeatedly advocated privatisation of the refineries however was vilified and accused of planning to promote public belongings to cronies.
“At present, the info have caught up with the rhetoric,” he mentioned, including that many years of so-called turnaround upkeep had consumed billions of {dollars} with little or nothing to point out for it.
Atiku argued that the failure of the refineries uncovered deep structural issues, together with gaps in technical capability, weak monetary self-discipline and poor administration.
He additional criticised current efforts to revive the refineries, describing them as politically motivated moderately than pushed by sound financial reasoning.
“The newest push to ‘revive’ these refineries was propelled by political strain, not financial sense. Politics mustn’t ever substitute for sound, transformative coverage,” he mentioned.
Atiku additionally suggested towards pursuing any new refinery agreements, together with partnerships with overseas corporations, warning that such preparations would merely replicate failed fashions of the previous.
In keeping with him, Nigeria would have been higher served by promoting the refineries earlier than embarking on expensive rehabilitation initiatives, thereby avoiding rising debt ranges and the continued depreciation of belongings he described as liabilities.
He concluded that decisive privatisation stays probably the most viable possibility for ending many years of waste and inefficiency within the nation’s refining sector.
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