Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has demanded the suspension of a new refinery partnership announced by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited⁠�, arguing that the two Chinese firms involved lack verifiable experience managing large crude oil refineries.

The criticism targets what NNPC described as a “Technical Equity Partnership” involving Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xingcheng (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd. The proposed arrangement comes after years of failed rehabilitation efforts at Nigeria’s state-owned refineries, including the Port Harcourt and Warri facilities.

Atiku said Nigerians were being asked to trust another refinery restructuring process after more than $2.5 billion had already been spent on rehabilitation projects that produced limited operational results. His statement questioned both the technical qualifications of the Chinese firms and the opacity surrounding the agreement itself.

“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,” he said.

Sanjiang Chemical’s Public Profile Does Not Match Crude Refinery Operations

Publicly available corporate information on Sanjiang Chemical describes the company primarily as a petrochemical manufacturer focused on methanol-to-olefins, ethylene oxide, surfactants, and light hydrocarbon processing. Atiku’s statement argued that those operations differ substantially from running ageing national crude oil refineries such as Port Harcourt and Warri.

A petrochemical processing company may handle hydrocarbon derivatives without operating a full-scale refinery that processes crude oil into petrol, diesel, aviation fuel, and other refined products. Industry analysts contacted by Nigerian media in previous refinery debates have repeatedly noted that refinery rehabilitation requires expertise in corrosion management, catalytic cracking systems, pipeline integrity, and legacy infrastructure maintenance.

The Port Harcourt Refining Company alone has a nameplate refining capacity of 210,000 barrels per day across its old and new plants, according to NNPC technical documentation released during earlier rehabilitation announcements. The Warri refinery was originally designed for 125,000 barrels daily.

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Atiku stated there is “no publicly available evidence anywhere in the world” showing that Sanjiang has previously built or operated crude refineries of that scale. He added that processing petrochemical derivatives “is not the same as running an ageing national refinery burdened with decades of operational decay.”

The criticism goes beyond rhetoric. It points directly at the technical mismatch between petrochemical specialization and refinery turnaround management, an area where Nigeria has repeatedly struggled despite multiple contractor engagements over two decades.

Questions Also Surround Xingcheng (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd.

Atiku’s statement raised separate concerns about Xingcheng (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd., the second company named in the proposed partnership. According to the statement, available corporate and industry records do not demonstrate verifiable experience in refinery engineering, petroleum processing, or hydrocarbon operations.

Industrial park management firms typically oversee logistics, real estate coordination, utilities, and commercial tenant operations. Those responsibilities differ significantly from refinery maintenance, crude distillation management, and petroleum systems engineering.

We reviewed corporate references and public descriptions cited in Nigerian media coverage of the agreement, and none identified a previous flagship crude refinery rehabilitation project directly executed by Xingcheng in Africa, the Middle East, or Asia.

NNPC has not publicly released full technical evaluation documents explaining why the firms were selected over established refinery engineering contractors with visible global refinery portfolios. The company also has not disclosed the equity structure, financial exposure, performance benchmarks, or operational guarantees tied to the partnership.

The missing details are significant.

Nigeria’s Refinery Rehabilitation Record Already Carries Political Damage

The dispute lands at a politically difficult moment for the federal government and NNPC leadership. Nigeria has spent years funding refinery repairs while continuing to rely heavily on imported refined petroleum products.

The Port Harcourt refinery rehabilitation contract approved in 2021 carried a reported $1.5 billion financing structure backed partly by the African Export-Import Bank. The Warri and Kaduna refinery rehabilitation packages approved later added hundreds of millions of dollars more to total projected costs.

NNPC announced in late 2024 that the Port Harcourt refinery had resumed operations. But independent petroleum marketers and industry associations later questioned the scale of actual refining activity, fuel distribution levels, and commercial sustainability of the restart.

The reality is, public confidence eroded long before this latest partnership debate emerged.

Our analysis of federal budget records and NNPC rehabilitation announcements between 2010 and 2025 identified repeated allocations, turnaround maintenance contracts, and rehabilitation pledges tied to the country’s four state-owned refineries. Successive administrations made similar commitments while domestic refining output remained inconsistent.

Political Opposition Is Framing the Partnership as a Transparency Test

Atiku’s intervention also reflects a broader opposition strategy focused on public procurement transparency and state-owned enterprise accountability. By challenging the technical credentials of the Chinese firms, the former vice president is forcing NNPC to defend not only the partnership itself but the process used to approve it.

The pressure could widen.

Energy economists have repeatedly argued that refinery rehabilitation projects become politically vulnerable when procurement terms remain confidential. Questions over contractor competence, financing obligations, and operational benchmarks tend to intensify when previous rehabilitation efforts produced limited measurable output.

NNPC has previously defended strategic foreign partnerships as necessary to attract technical expertise and capital into Nigeria’s energy sector. But the company now faces demands for detailed disclosure of the technical and financial structure behind the proposed arrangement.

Silence increases suspicion.

Atiku Abubakar is challenging NNPC’s refinery partnership after more than $2.5 billion was already spent on rehabilitation projects.

Sanjiang Chemical’s publicly known operations focus on petrochemicals, not ageing crude oil refinery management on the scale of Port Harcourt or Warri.

Questions around Xingcheng (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd. center on the absence of publicly verifiable refinery engineering experience.

Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited⁠� has not yet released full technical evaluation documents or detailed commercial terms tied to the partnership.

Is Atiku saying the Chinese firms are fake companies?

No. His argument is narrower. He says the companies appear to exist legitimately but lack publicly verifiable experience managing large crude oil refineries like Port Harcourt and Warri.

How much has Nigeria spent on refinery rehabilitation?

Public figures from government approvals and statements place combined refinery rehabilitation spending above $2.5 billion in recent years. The Port Harcourt project alone carried a reported $1.5 billion financing structure.

Has NNPC responded with technical evidence yet?

As of the latest statements, NNPC had not publicly released detailed technical qualification documents, performance guarantees, or contractor evaluation records tied to the partnership.

The unresolved question now is whether the National Assembly’s petroleum committees or the Bureau of Public Procurement will demand disclosure of the partnership documents before implementation proceeds. No public review deadline has been announced, and the precise equity structure, financial liabilities, and operational control rights attached to the agreement remain undisclosed.