A public affairs analyst and transparency advocate, Oghenetega Edafe, has rubbished the recent Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited partnership with Chinese firms to restart the country’s Port Harcourt and Warri refineries.
He made his criticism known in a statement on Wednesday.
Recall that NNPCL reignited the hope of Nigerian refineries restarting with a Memorandum of Understanding recently signed with Chinese firms.
The move had attracted applause from petroleum product marketers and retailers, hinting that if the MoU is implemented, retail prices of fuel may drop.
However, Edale said the partnership is another round of official waste of resources after the refineries had gulped $1 billion on rehabilitation in the last two decades.
According to Edafe, the development raised serious questions about fiscal discipline, policy coherence, and the absence of accountability for previous investments running into billions of dollars.
“What Nigerians are witnessing is a troubling pattern of policy repetition without reflection. The same refineries that have gulped enormous public funds over the years are once again at the center 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,” he said.
“It is unacceptable that after committing over one billion dollars to refinery rehabilitation, the nation is being asked to embrace yet another agreement without a clear and verifiable audit of previous interventions.
“This is not just about policy failure; it is about the potential erosion of public trust in how national wealth is managed,” Edafe said.