Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has called for the immediate suspension of the agreement between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, and two Chinese firms aimed at reviving the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries.
NNPCL recently announced a partnership with Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xingcheng Fuzhou Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd. to restart operations at the nation’s refineries.
Reacting through a statement issued on Friday by his spokesperson, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku described the arrangement as “another dangerous gamble with Nigeria’s economic future.”
He accused the administration of President Bola Tinubu of attempting to mortgage critical national assets through what he termed opaque agreements lacking technical credibility, transparency and accountability.
“It is both shocking and insulting that after wasting over $2.5 billion on endless refinery rehabilitation scandals, the NNPC is once again asking Nigerians to trust another experiment built on secrecy and questionable competence,” Atiku stated.
The former Vice President questioned the technical competence of the Chinese firms involved in the agreement.
According to him, Sanjiang Chemical may be a legitimate petrochemical company, but it primarily specializes in downstream fine chemicals manufacturing, including surfactants, ethylene oxide, methanol to olefins and light hydrocarbon processing, rather than crude oil refining.
“There is no publicly available evidence anywhere in the world showing that Sanjiang has ever built, operated, or managed a full scale crude oil refinery of the magnitude and complexity of Port Harcourt or Warri refineries.
“Processing petrochemical derivatives is not the same as running an aging national refinery burdened with decades of operational decay,” he added.
Atiku also raised concerns about Xingcheng Fuzhou Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd., saying there was no verifiable evidence linking the company to petroleum engineering, refinery management or hydrocarbon processing.
“By every available corporate and industry record, Xingcheng is essentially an industrial park and infrastructure management company, the equivalent of handing over a hospital’s intensive care unit to a real estate developer simply because they can construct buildings,” the statement said.
He questioned why the Federal Government and NNPCL allegedly overlooked globally established refinery engineering and EPC firms with proven records in favour of companies whose experience, according to him, remains uncertain.
Atiku warned that the current approach could turn Nigeria’s refineries into “another expensive black hole of failed promises, reckless experimentation, and opaque transactions.”
“It is unacceptable that after years of failed turnaround maintenance scams, billions of dollars squandered, and repeated lies about refinery functionality, Nigerians are now being told to celebrate a memorandum of understanding signed with companies whose core expertise does not align with the technical realities of refinery rehabilitation,” he said.
“Nigerians must not allow the same people who destroyed the refineries through incompetence and corruption to now hide behind vague Chinese partnerships to continue the cycle of deception.”
The former presidential candidate demanded the immediate publication of the full terms of the Memorandum of Understanding, a transparent technical due diligence report on both firms, disclosure of Nigeria’s financial obligations under the deal, and an open competitive process involving globally reputable refinery operators.
He also called for a full legislative investigation into previous billions spent on refinery rehabilitation without measurable outcomes.
“The era where NNPC signs opaque agreements abroad and expects Nigerians to clap blindly is over.
“National assets are not toys for bureaucratic experimentation. The Port Harcourt and Warri refineries are too strategic to be surrendered to uncertainty, obscurity, and corporate guesswork,” Atiku stated.
