Atiku to NNPC: Your planned refinery deal with foreign partners repeats failed models

Says any proposed refinery deal should be discontinued

Slams refinery spending, says NNPC’s admission validates call for privatisation

Emeka Agu Jnr

Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has kicked against proposed plan by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPCL) Limited to engage foreign partners in its bid to revive the nation’s petroleum refineries.

Recall that the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited recently opened talks with a Chinese petrochemical firm over the revival of one of its state-owned refineries.

The disclosure was made by NNPC’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari, during a fireside chat at the Nigeria International Energy Summit 2026 held in Abuja on Wednesday, February 4, 2026.

According to Ojulari, the move is part of a broader strategy to bring in experienced refinery operators as equity partners to turn around NNPC’s four refineries after years of losses, weak utilisation, and operational underperformance.

However, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said the latest push to “revive” these refineries was driven by political pressure, not economic sense, adding “Politics must never substitute for sound, transformative policy”.

According to him, any proposed refinery deal, including with foreign partners, should be discontinued, as it merely repeats failed models.

“Nigeria would have been better served by selling the refineries pre-rehabilitation to avoid ballooning debt and the steady depreciation of what have effectively become liabilities,” he added.

The 2023 presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), now a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), in a statement posted on his Facebook page on Sunday, berated the NNPCL for foot-dragging on the moribund the refineries and need to privatize them.

He said: “After gulping $1.5bn, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has now admitted that reopening the Port Harcourt Refinery is a waste of scarce resources. This belated admission validates my long-held position that Nigeria’s refineries should be privatised.

“It is instructive that the Tinubu administration has finally come to terms with an inevitable truth: pouring public funds into moribund refineries is economically indefensible. Paying billions in salaries to facilities that produce not a single litre of petrol does not serve the national interest.

“For years, I advanced this patriotic position and was vilified and accused of plotting to sell public assets to “friends.”

“Today, the facts have caught up with the rhetoric. Decades of so-called turnaround maintenance have swallowed billions of dollars with nothing to show for it, exposing deep deficits in capacity, technical know-how, and financial discipline”.