- Says It’s ‘Suspicious… Unwise Use Of Scarce funds’
By Abiola Olawale
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President of Nigeria has criticized the approval $1.5bn for the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refinery by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
Atiku, who was also the 2019 presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), raised serious objections to the refinery’s rehabilitation, adding that such approval shouldn’t have been made given the fact that the national’s debt has grown to N32.9 trillion.
The New Diplomat had reported that President Muhammadu Buhari who presided over the 38th virtual meeting of FEC on Wednesday, gave his nod to the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery.
Financial experts have projected that at an exchange rate of N400 to a dollar, the approved sum of $1.5 billion to be spent on the oil facility is equivalent to about N615 billion of the Nigerian tax payer’s money.
Reacting in a statement, Atiku claimed that the approval was suspicious, adding that there was no public tender before the FEC announced the cost of the rehabilitation.
Atiku who has been a preacher of privatisation of public assets, also reiterated that the four refineries in the country should be privatise.
According to him, the government should privatise the refineries rather than spending ‘scarce funds” to refurbish the moribund assets.
He advised that the Federal government should be prudent in its spending, adding that the national debt is growing day by day.
The statement reads: “That Nigeria’s economy is in dire straits is a fact well known both to the nation and to our international partners. Unemployment has just reached an all-time high of 33%, while inflation has hit another record high of 17%. To therefore budget the sum of $1.5 billion to renovate or turn around the Port Harcourt Refinery would appear to be an unwise use of scarce funds at this critical juncture for an assortment of reasons. First of all, our refineries have been loss-making for multiple years, and indeed, it is questionable wisdom to throw good money after bad. At other times, I have counselled that the best course of action would be to privatise our refineries to be run more effectively and efficiently. The cost appears prohibitive. Too prohibitive, especially as Shell Petroleum Development Company last year sold its Martinez Refinery in California, USA, which is of a similar size as the Port Harcourt refinery, for $1.2 billion. We must bear in mind that the Shell Martinez Refinery is more profitable than the Port Harcourt Refinery. Given this discrepancy, might we ask if there was a public tender before this cost was announced? Was due diligence performed? Because we are certainly not getting value for money. Not by a long stretch. We cannot as a nation expect to make economic progress if we continue to fund inefficiency, and we are going too deep into the debt trap for unnecessarily overpriced projects. Our national debt has grown from N12 trillion in 2015 to N32.9 trillion today. Indeed that is shocking enough to cause us to be more prudent in the way we commit future generations into the bondage of bonds and debt.”
