Atiku to Tinubu: Stop blaming Buhari, account for ₦4trn refinery spend

By Omeiza Ajayi

Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress ADC, Atiku Abubakar, has told President Bola Tinubu to stop blaming former President Muhammadu Buhari for the country’s refinery woes and instead account for the trillions of naira sunk into the facilities under his own watch.

Atiku’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, said in a statement on Sunday in Abuja that the combined obligations of the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company NNPC Limited rose from about ₦4.52 trillion at the end of 2023 to ₦8.67 trillion at the end of 2024, an increase of roughly ₦4.15 trillion in a single year of the Tinubu presidency.

He noted the irony that the same administration which announced in November 2024 that the Port Harcourt refinery had resumed operations at 70 per cent capacity, presenting it as a flagship success of the Renewed Hope Agenda, is now distancing itself from the same facilities after NNPC’s own leadership admitted they were running at a “monumental loss.”

The former vice president dismissed the president’s references to inherited liabilities as political escapism.

Demanding accountability for the money, Atiku asked: “If the combined obligations of these refineries jumped by more than ₦4 trillion in 2024 alone, what exactly did Nigerians receive in return? Where did the money go? Where are the products? Where are the savings Nigerians were promised?”

He argued that the sum represented far more than a balance-sheet figure, pointing to what it could have funded elsewhere. “Think about what ₦4 trillion could do for Nigeria. Think about the universities struggling with overcrowded lecture halls, hospitals without modern equipment, roads that have become death traps and communities without electricity or potable water,” he said, describing the situation as “an unforgivable failure of stewardship” rather than mere incompetence.

Atiku insisted that a government cannot selectively claim credit for successes while attributing every failure to those who came before it, adding that after more than three years in office, “Nigerians are entitled to examine the liability his own administration has become.”

Atiku warned against a second term for the president, saying: “President Tinubu’s scorecard after more than three years is increasingly a story of fire and smoke — enormous expenditure, extravagant announcements and very little Nigerians can hold in their hands. Nigeria cannot afford another four years of paying for failure.”

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