Atiku Questions NNPCL’s Privatization of Port Harcourt Refinery After Its Rehabilitation
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) 2023 poll presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has questioned the rationale behind the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL)’s privatization of Port Harcourt refinery after its rehabilitation.
He opted for the outright sale of the refinery.
Atiku in a statement also criticized the former President, Muhammadu Buhari’s administration for not privatizing Nigeria’s idle oil refineries earlier.
He said his position has been well laid out in the Atiku plan (2018) and ‘my covenant with Nigerians (2022)’ but regretted that his suggestions fell on deaf ears.
Read Also:
NNPCL Says It Has No Plan to Hike Petrol Price
According to him, Buhari administration, refused to privatize the refineries, left them idle for years while paying humongous staff salaries, before contracting a loan of US $1.5 billion for rehabilitation.
Atiku said now, the current administration of President Bola Tinubu wants to turn the rehabilitated refinery to private concerns for operation and maintenance.
Two months later, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation now NNPC Limited, said it had commenced the rehabilitation of the refinery.
Now under the administration of President Bola Tinubu, the NNPCL, on December 21, 2023, said it had completed the mechanical phase of the turnaround maintenance at the plant, adding that operations would commence before the end of the year.
Prior to this, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, during an inspection tour of the facility in August 2023, had assured of the commencement of operations by December of the same year.
But, on January 15, 2024, the national oil company announced that it was seeking credible operations and maintenance (O&M) companies to operate and maintain the Port Harcourt Refining Company.
