Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has lambasted NNPCL Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari over his remarks suggesting that the reopening of the Port Harcourt Refinery would be a waste of scarce national resources.

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”