Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has criticised the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) following comments by its Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari, suggesting that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery would amount to a waste of scarce resources.

Recall that Ojulari, in his speech at the Nigeria International Energy Summit (NIES) in Abuja last week, said the money spent on revamping Nigeria’s refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna was wasted.

Reacting in a statement on Sunday, Atiku said the admission by the NNPCL leadership validated his long-held position that Nigeria’s refineries should be privatised rather than continuously funded with public money.

“After gulping about $1.5 billion, the NNPCL has now admitted that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery is a waste of scarce resources,” the statement read. “This belated admission validates my long-held position that Nigeria’s refineries should be privatised.”

The former vice president described the continued injection of public funds into non-functional refineries as economically unjustifiable, noting that billions of naira have been spent on salaries and maintenance without any tangible output.

“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,” Atiku said. “Paying billions in salaries to facilities that produce not a single litre of petrol does not serve the national interest.”

Atiku recalled that he had consistently advocated the privatisation of the refineries in the past but was criticised and accused of planning to sell national assets to cronies.

“For years, I advanced this patriotic position and was vilified and accused of plotting to sell public assets to ‘friends,’” he stated. “Today, the facts have caught up with the rhetoric.”

He further faulted decades of turnaround maintenance on the refineries, arguing that they have consumed billions of dollars without results while exposing weaknesses in capacity, technical expertise and financial discipline.

According to him, the most recent attempts to revive the refineries were motivated by political considerations rather than sound economic reasoning.

“The latest push to ‘revive’ these refineries was driven by political pressure, not economic sense. Politics must never substitute for sound, transformative policy.

“Paying billions in salaries to facilities that produce not a single litre of petrol does not serve the national interest,” he said.

He advised that any proposed refinery arrangement, including partnerships with foreign firms, should be discontinued, warning that such moves would only replicate past failures.

“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,” Atiku added.