Tinubu Rejects Blame Game, Vows to Revive Refineries with Profitability Focus

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Tinubu Rejects Blame Game, Vows to Revive Refineries with Profitability Focus

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has firmly rejected engaging in a blame game over Nigeria’s long-moribund state-owned refineries, instead vowing to take full responsibility for reviving them and ensuring they operate profitably rather than merely producing smoke and flames without economic value. The President gave this assurance on Thursday, August 13, 2026, while receiving the leadership of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), led by its National President, Mr. Sulaimon Oladiti, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. The meeting, which was also attended by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, provided a platform for the union to express its concerns about the state of the nation’s refineries and other pressing issues affecting the petroleum sector.

President Tinubu acknowledged the union’s concerns about the prolonged delays in reviving the refineries and declared that the Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna refineries would indeed return to operation. He cautioned that mere visible activity would not be considered success, stating emphatically that “the refineries that you mentioned are going to come back to work. We’re just building a very firm reset and structural reworking of the economics of it. Ordinary flame and smoke of a refinery doesn’t mean it’s working, until it’s profitable and yields the value for which it is built.” This statement underscores the President’s determination to move beyond the symbolic restarting of the refineries to ensuring their long-term commercial viability and contribution to the national economy.

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The President’s stance reflects a significant shift from merely attempting to restart the facilities to ensuring their long-term commercial viability. This comes after years of government spending on rehabilitation projects that failed to deliver sustained production. Under the previous administration, about $2.9 billion was approved for the rehabilitation of the refineries, yet the facilities barely produced refined products before being shut down again. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) has since signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Chinese companies for a potential Technical Equity Partnership to support the completion and operation of the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries, signaling a new approach to addressing the challenges facing these critical national assets.

Acknowledging the history of failed interventions, Tinubu said his administration has accepted the assets and liabilities inherited from previous governments and would not waste time looking backward. He declared, “I’m not a man who will look back and blame everyone, because I’ve accepted the assets and liabilities of my predecessors. No matter what happened in the past years, it’s my responsibility now as President to fix it and make it work for the greatest common good of our population. I take responsibility for that, and I’m going to do it.” This statement reflects the President’s commitment to taking ownership of the challenges facing the nation’s refineries and his determination to find lasting solutions that will benefit all Nigerians.

The meeting also addressed other important issues affecting the petroleum sector and the broader economy. Tinubu urged truck owners who have converted their vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to pass on the cost savings to commuters rather than pocketing the full benefit themselves. He expressed concern that “whatever benefit that is coming from CNG is going into the pocket of truck owners, it’s not spreading as fast as I would like it, but it should spread.” The President also linked the government’s ability to fund major infrastructure projects to the economic reforms his administration has pursued since 2023, citing the Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kaduna, Abuja-Kano, and Sokoto-Badagry road corridors among investments aimed at stimulating economic activities and improving public safety. Tinubu also promised to review constitutional issues surrounding the implementation of local government autonomy and appealed to stakeholders for understanding.

Earlier in the meeting, the NUPENG President, Salimon Oladiti, commended Tinubu’s decision to remove the fuel subsidy as courageous, saying it had freed resources for infrastructure development and other critical sectors. He also urged the President to sustain efforts to revive the country’s refineries, noting that functional facilities would strengthen Nigeria’s energy security, reduce dependence on imported petroleum products, and create more opportunities for Nigerian workers. Oladiti appealed for the rehabilitation of the Nigerian Pipelines and Storage Company (NPSC) depots, recommending they be handed over to private investors to manage under an equity arrangement. He also raised concerns about the casualisation of workers in the upstream sector, describing it as an “unhealthy trend” that NUPENG and its sister union, PENGASSAN, had been trying to correct with little success, and urged the President to use his good offices to stop the practice.

The NUPENG leadership later decorated President Tinubu as the Grand Patron of the union, a symbolic gesture of their confidence in his leadership and commitment to the welfare of petroleum workers. The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, said NUPENG‘s recognition of the administration’s efforts had helped reduce friction between organised labour and the government, describing it as uncommon for a major labour union to publicly acknowledge government reforms. Tinubu also pledged greater involvement of NUPENG in implementing the Presidential Initiative on CNG, ensuring that the union plays a key role in the transition to cleaner energy sources.