Yesterday the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited signed a memorandum of understanding with Sanjiang Chemical Company Limited and Xinganchen (Fuzhou) Industrial Park Operation and Management Co. Ltd. to restart, complete and expand the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries — a deal NECA immediately challenged. Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde of the Manufacturers Association said the pact, which roundly features in what the NNPCL described as a move to revive domestic refining, raises urgent questions about past spending and local benefits.
The weight of NECA’s objection is numeric and direct: between 2010 and 2023 Nigeria expended over N11 trillion — approximately $25 billion — on refinery rehabilitation projects, maintenance and turnaround programmes while state-owned refineries remain significantly unreliable and non-functional. Oyerinde warned bluntly that "it would be unpatriotic to endorse another opaque deal while questions on past spending remain unanswered" and pointed to "the gamble of over $1.5 billion on the Port-Harcourt refinery in March 2021" as evidence of repeated, costly failures.
Port Harcourt’s refinery history underlines the point. The plant has undergone multiple rehabilitation cycles since the 1990s, with documented work spanning 2000-2010, 2012-2015 and 2016-2021. Yet despite those cycles, and the March 2021 injection of more than $1.5 billion, the refineries have not produced the reliable domestic fuel stream that policymakers promised — a fact NECA used to press for a different approach.
NECA’s recommendation is specific: the Federal Government should privatise or concession the nation’s refineries rather than continue with what it calls endless turnaround maintenance. The association added that "the MoU would guarantee Nigerian man-hours, procurement, and technology transfer beyond press statements" must be demonstrable and contractually binding, not left to goodwill in public announcements.
There is context beyond the headline figures. NECA framed its criticism around industrial strategy: "Nigeria cannot industrialise on imported fuel," the association said, and it is equally blunt about resources already consumed — "Nigeria cannot develop by burning approximately $25 billion on refineries that do not work." Those are not abstract assertions; they are the economic argument that undergirds NECA’s call for concessions or privatization as immediate policy options.
The friction in this story is clear. The civil society group Nigeria Citizens Watch for Good Governance publicly supported the MoU, creating a split between those who see foreign partnership as a fast track back to output and those who see another round of opaque contracts and public spending. Oyerinde pressed on the practical mechanics: how, precisely, will the MoU guarantee Nigerian man‑hours, procurement and technology transfer beyond press statements — and who will audit the outcome?
NECA also insisted the NNPCL must provide Nigerians with sufficient informational explanation on the status of past spending and audits carried out on the refineries before fresh commitments are allowed to proceed. That demand frames the immediate next steps: disclosure of past audit results, clear contract terms that lock in local content and a public accounting of what the March 2021 funds bought at Port Harcourt.
If the government and NNPCL want this MoU to placate skeptics and deliver a working domestic refining sector, they will need two things voters and industry can verify: transparent audits of the N11 trillion spent and legally enforceable guarantees that jobs, procurement and technology are transferred to Nigerians. The single most consequential unanswered question now is whether the NNPCL will release those audits and write local‑content safeguards into any final contract — or whether the country will again watch new money flow into refineries that remain non‑functional.
