Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar is querying the plan by the federal government to spend 1.5 billion dollars for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery.

At the end of the Federal Executive Council meeting yesterday, the minister of state for petroleum announced the government’s plan, explaining that the repair work would be undertaken in phases for a total of 44 months.

But in a statement today the former vice president describes the proposal as a waste of resources, especially coming at a time that the nation’s economy is in dire straits.

According to him: “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 a multiplicity of reasons.”

Atiku suggests that the best course of action will be to privatize the refineries for more effective and efficient management.

In a comparative analysis, Mr. Atiku described the planned rehabilitation as too expensive, saying shell petroleum development company sold a refinery of similar size in the u.s. last year for $1.2 billion.

In the words of the former vice president, “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.”

He notes that the country’s debt which has spiked from ₦12 trillion in 2015 to ₦32.9 trillion today, is shocking enough to cause the nation to be more prudent in the way it borrows.

Below is a full statement as released by the former vice president.
Read the full statement here https://www.hosted247.com.ng/2021/03/15-billion-to-renovate-port-harcourt.html