Port Harcourt — For decades, the dream of self-sufficient domestic refining has danced before Nigerians like an elusive mirage – visible from afar but dissolving upon approach. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has once again raised hopes, and eyebrows, announcing yet another agreement to resurrect the country’s long-moribund refineries. But this time, the proposed saviours have a problem: by multiple accounts, they appear spectacularly unqualified for the task at hand.
On 30 April 2026, in Jiaxing City, China, NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer Bashir Bayo Ojulari signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with two Chinese entities, Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xingcheng (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd, for a proposed “Technical Equity Partnership” to complete the rehabilitation and operation of the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries.
The announcement provoked an immediate, furious backlash from stakeholders across Nigeria’s political and economic spectrum. The central question is damningly simple: why would NNPC choose partners whose core expertise aligns more with real estate and petrochemical derivatives than with the monumental task of reviving Africa’s most troubled refineries?
A Pattern of Failure
To understand the outrage, one must first grasp the scale of past failure. According to official figures, the federal government had already sunk over $2.39 billion into repairing the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries under the previous administration. The Port Harcourt refinery received %1.5 billion in approvals in March 2021, while $897.6 million was committed to Warri.
The results? The Port Harcourt Refinery briefly resumed operations in late 2024 after years of inactivity, only to be shut down after six months due to what were described as “operational and financial challenges”. For context, the plant, designed with a 210,000 barrels-per-day capacity, could not stay functional for a single fiscal quarter despite a billion-dollar price tag.
The Warri Refinery’s story is similarly grim. Despite achieving “mechanical completion milestones” on its 78,000 bpd facility in 2024, it too shut down shortly afterwards.
In February 2025, Ojulari himself reportedly described most of the $2.5 billion turnaround maintenance effort as “a waste” – an admission that raises profound questions about who, if anyone, has been held accountable for this colossal squandering of public funds.
The New ‘Saviours’
Now comes the new MoU, and the due diligence conducted on the prospective Chinese partners by credible voices like former President of the Organised Private Sector, Dele Oye, has yielded alarming findings.
Oye’s investigation, based on what he described as a thorough due diligence exercise, revealed that one of the two firms “has no track record in refinery turnaround maintenance and is facing financial constraints, raising doubts about its capacity to mobilise for the project”. Even more strikingly, the other firm “operates primarily as a real estate company”. Oye did not mince his words: “Compared with the contractors that failed us in the past, both appear less experienced and less qualified”.
Atiku Weighs In
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has joined the chorus, demanding the immediate suspension and full public scrutiny of what he called a “Technical Equity Partnership” built on “secrecy and questionable competence”.
According to Atiku, independent assessments demonstrate that neither Sanjiang Chemical nor Xingcheng possesses “the pedigree, technical depth, or global reputation associated with the rehabilitation and management of complex crude oil refineries”.
Atiku’s critique is meticulously detailed. Sanjiang Chemical, he noted, is “fundamentally a downstream fine chemicals manufacturer specialising in surfactants, ethylene oxide, methanol-to-olefins, and light hydrocarbon processing” – all valuable in industrial chemistry, but none equivalent to “running an ageing national refinery burdened with decades of operational decay”.
“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,” Atiku’s statement declared.
Regarding the second partner, Xingcheng, Atiku was even more scathing: “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”.
Troubling Financial Signals
Beyond questions of technical competence, concerns have also been raised about Sanjiang Chemical’s financial health. Despite being publicly listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, reports indicate the company “is operating under liquidity pressure”, with declining revenues, shrinking profitability, and significant short-term debt exposure.
Atiku posed the question that many Nigerians are likely asking: “If a company is already battling financial compression and liquidity concerns in its own operations, how exactly does it intend to shoulder the burden of reviving two of Africa’s most troubled refineries?”
The Group Voice
Civil society has also mobilised. The Centre for Energy Sector Transparency (CEST) slammed the agreement, demanding a forensic investigation into all past refinery rehabilitation expenditures exceeding one billion dollars.
CEST Executive Director Oghenetega Edafe argued that the recurring pattern constitutes “a troubling repetition of policy without reflection”, warning that “technical expertise alone cannot fix a system that lacks transparency, oversight, and consequences for failure”.
“What Nigerians are witnessing is a troubling pattern of policy repetition without reflection,” Edafe said. “The same refineries that have gulped enormous public funds over the years are once again at the centre of a fresh round of agreements, yet there has been no transparent accounting of what has already been spent or why those investments failed to deliver results.”
CEST called on the National Assembly and anti-corruption agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to conduct a comprehensive investigation covering contract awards, fund disbursements, and project timelines over the past decade.
NNPC’s Silence
Particularly troubling is NNPC’s silence on the $1.5 billion reportedly approved for the Warri Refinery rehabilitation project. Meanwhile, neither the specific terms of engagement with the Chinese firms nor the financial architecture of the proposed “equity partnership” has been publicly disclosed.
Oye, whose due diligence raised these issues, also highlighted that the MoU for the Warri refinery was signed in “secret”, creating an impression that “something was wrong with the whole process”.
The Non-Binding Defence
Officially, NNPC maintains that the agreement is non-binding and subject to regulatory approvals and further negotiations. Ojulari described the MoU as “an important step in the journey towards identifying potential technical equity partner(s)”.
But critics argue that this characterisation does little to reassure a sceptical public. Nigeria has been on such a “journey” for decades, and the only consistent destination has been disappointment.
“The idea of bringing in technical partners with equity stakes is not inherently flawed,” Edafe conceded. “However, it becomes deeply problematic when it is introduced as a substitute for accountability.”
“Given the failings of the past and the lack of resolution of responsibility, it has become imperative for the management of the NNPC Ltd to give full disclosure of the character and content of this non-binding agreement. This would inspire confidence and enable concerned stakeholders to track projections and anticipated outcomes. The days when management personnel hid behind boardroom talk with nothing but mounting debt to show for it are long gone.”
The Question of Accountability
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this recurring saga is the apparent lack of consequences for failure. Those who superintended the previous turnaround maintenance contracts – where billions were spent for negligible returns – have not been publicly identified, investigated, or sanctioned.
As Edafe put it: “Before we speak of new partnerships, Nigerians deserve a full disclosure of how past funds were utilised, who was responsible for project delivery, and why the expected outcomes were not achieved.”
The demands from multiple quarters – Atiku, Dele Oye, CEST, and other civil society voices – converge on this central point: no new agreement should proceed without a full, transparent accounting of the billions already spent.
The Broader Context
Before the advent of the privately owned and managed Dangote Refinery, Nigeria’s inability to refine its own crude oil was an economic paradox and a national embarrassment. Africa’s largest oil producer was overwhelmingly dependent on imported petroleum products, subsidising fuel consumption at enormous fiscal cost while exporting crude to be refined elsewhere.
Successive administrations have promised to break this cycle. But with each failed intervention, the cycle appears to tighten. Atiku captured this despair when he described the current deal as “another dangerous gamble with Nigeria’s economic future”, accusing the Tinubu administration of “attempting to mortgage strategic national assets through opaque agreements”.
What Next?
The ball is now in multiple courts. The National Assembly has been called upon to summon NNPC management for explanations. Anti-corruption agencies face pressure to audit past expenditures. And the general public – weary of billion-dollar failures and suspicious of new partnerships built on secrecy – awaits answers that have been promised before.
As these proceedings unfold, one pressing question remains: will NNPC step out of the shadows and provide the transparency necessary to restore public confidence? Or will the “Technical Equity Partnership” join the long list of refinery revival schemes that proved to be nothing more than expensive illusions?
For now, Nigerians watch and wait. The mirage has appeared again on the horizon. The question is whether, this time, it will prove real.
