Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has called for the immediate suspension of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s refinery revival deal with two Chinese firms, describing the arrangement as a risky and opaque gamble with Nigeria’s economic future.
Atiku made the demand in a statement issued on Friday by his spokesperson, Phrank Shaibu.
The reaction followed the recent announcement by NNPC Limited that it had entered into a partnership with Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xingcheng (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd to restart the Port Harcourt Refinery and Warri Refinery.
Reacting to the development, Atiku accused the administration of President Bola Tinubu of attempting to mortgage critical national assets through arrangements 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 said.
The former vice president argued that Sanjiang Chemical, while a legitimate petrochemical company, does not possess the technical background required to operate large-scale crude oil refineries.
“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,” he stated.
“Processing petrochemical derivatives is not the same as running an aging national refinery burdened with decades of operational decay.”
Atiku also questioned the competence of the second Chinese company involved in the deal.
“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 added.
He further queried why the Federal Government and NNPC allegedly bypassed globally recognised refinery engineering and EPC firms with established expertise in refinery rehabilitation.
According to him, the Tinubu administration risks turning 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.”
Atiku demanded the immediate publication of the full terms of the MoU, a transparent technical due diligence report on both firms, disclosure of Nigeria’s financial obligations under the arrangement, and an open competitive process involving globally reputable refinery operators.
He also called for a legislative investigation into billions of dollars previously spent on refinery rehabilitation projects without measurable results.
“The era where NNPC signs opaque agreements abroad and expects Nigerians to clap blindly is over,” Atiku stated.
“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.”
