AYEKOOTO : WHO DECIDES WHAT NIGERIANS PAY FOR PETROL?

By Lanre Ogundipe

There is a point at which an explanation for public hardship becomes part of the hardship itself.

For years, Nigerians have been given a familiar catalogue of reasons why petrol must cost more. Global crude prices have risen. The naira has weakened. The subsidy became unaffordable. Refining and logistics have become more expensive. Supply has tightened. The market has been deregulated.

There is truth in some of these explanations. But there is a question they have never satisfactorily answered: how much does each actually contribute to the price Nigerians are asked to pay?

That question has become unavoidable with the latest movement in the price of petrol.

Between August 21 and September 12, Dangote Petroleum Refinery raised its petrol gantry price four times, from ₦1,165 to ₦1,185, then ₦1,200, ₦1,265 and finally ₦1,350 per litre. The cumulative increase was ₦185, or about 15.9 per cent, in 22 days.

But the consumer does not buy petrol at the refinery gate. By September 14, reports from Abuja showed retail prices ranging from about ₦1,415 to ₦1,450 per litre, with some major marketers already above ₦1,400. Prices in Lagos and Ibadan were also rising.

The difference between the refinery gate and the pump is therefore no longer an abstract accounting question. It is money paid by the consumer.

A private refinery is entitled to determine its commercial price. The issue is not that right. The issue is whether successive increases can be traced, with reasonable transparency, to identifiable changes in the cost of producing and supplying a litre of petrol.

That is where the opacity begins.

On September 8, the Major Energy Marketers Association of Nigeria estimated petrol landing cost at ₦1,311.36 per litre, up from a 30-day average of ₦1,216.34.

Dangote’s gantry price at the time was ₦1,265. Four days later, it moved to ₦1,350.

The two figures are not directly interchangeable because an import landing cost and a domestic refinery’s gantry price represent different points in the supply chain. The international benchmark also does not automatically determine the price of domestically refined petrol. But the movement makes the underlying arithmetic impossible to ignore.

What was the refinery’s crude acquisition cost? How much of its crude came through domestic supply arrangements? What exchange rate applied? What was the refining and operating cost? What did logistics contribute? What margin was added at the refinery gate? And what accounts for the further movement from the refinery gate to the retail pump?

The public does not have sufficient information to reconstruct the answer.

That is not an accusation against Dangote. It is a transparency problem.

And Dangote is now too important to the Nigerian petroleum market for that problem to be treated casually.

The refinery has changed the country’s refining landscape and created a major domestic source of petrol. That is an industrial fact. It does not, however, remove the need to scrutinise its commercial decisions. The greater the market significance of an enterprise, the greater the public interest in understanding the economic consequences of its decisions.

Dangote should therefore neither be romanticised nor demonised.

It should be examined.

The same principle applies to NNPC.

Here the evidence is even more revealing.

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative reported that NNPC imported 14.53 billion litres of PMS in 2023 at a recorded supply cost of ₦6.74 trillion. Revenue was ₦3.73 trillion, leaving an under recovery of ₦3.01 trillion.

NNPC has said such spending reflected the gap between the regulated pump price and the actual cost of importing fuel to meet that price. That explanation has never removed the need for independent reconciliation.

The subsidy was formally removed in 2023. Yet a system in which the cost of supplying petrol exceeded the regulated selling price continued to generate a multitrillion naira difference in 2023.

The question is therefore not whether NNPC should be believed or disbelieved. Its figures should be independently reconciled.

How much petrol was actually supplied? At what cost? At what selling price? What constituted the under recovery? Who bore it? How was it settled? What part of the mechanism disappeared with subsidy removal and what part survived under another classification?

Until those questions are independently answered, Nigerians cannot be expected to regard the old subsidy controversy as completely closed.

Then came the currency shock.

The 2023 exchange rate reform altered the naira cost of dollar linked petroleum inputs at the same time that subsidy support was being withdrawn. Exchange rate movements therefore became a major component of petrol economics.

But “forex” cannot be permitted to become another explanation that ends the inquiry.

If the naira depreciates, the resulting increase in petrol cost should be calculable. If the naira appreciates, the corresponding benefit should also be traceable. If crude prices rise at the same time, the contribution of each factor should be distinguishable.

Otherwise, the Nigerian consumer receives the combined bill without being able to determine the contribution of any individual cost.

The domestic crude supply figures expose another weakness.

NUPRC reported that 61.9 million barrels of crude were allocated to domestic refineries in the first quarter of 2026, while actual supply was only 28.5 million barrels. Producers had offered 68.7 million barrels. NUPRC attributed the shortfall primarily to pricing gaps between producers and domestic refiners within the willing buyer, willing seller framework.

The figures do not prove that producers deliberately withheld crude. They do establish a substantial gap between what was allocated, what was offered and what reached local refineries.

That gap has an economic consequence.

If domestic refineries cannot obtain sufficient crude under the arrangements designed to support domestic refining, they must find alternative supplies or operate below potential capacity. Either way, the cost ultimately enters the petroleum economy.

Who bears that cost should not be a mystery.

This is precisely where NUPRC, NNPC and NMDPRA must be examined alongside the private refiners. The problem cannot be reduced to Dangote’s price when the crude supply architecture itself is producing measurable friction.

Nor can deregulation be used as an escape route.

Deregulation means government no longer directly fixes the commercial price. It does not mean government has ceased to have responsibility for competition, transparency and consumer protection.

Indeed, regulation becomes more important when direct price control disappears.

A deregulated market can function competitively only when participants have meaningful alternatives and when regulators can detect and address anti competitive or exploitative conduct.

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has already raised concerns of its own. In June 2026, following surveillance of gantry, depot and retail prices, FCCPC said price reductions had not been commensurate with the sharp fall in global crude prices and warned against consumer exploitation. It also made clear that it does not regulate or approve petroleum prices in the deregulated downstream market.

That is a significant indication of a structural problem.

A regulator can observe an apparent disconnect between international costs and domestic prices, but the consumer still needs a system capable of determining whether that disconnect has a legitimate commercial explanation.

That is what Nigeria lacks.

We have repeatedly told the consumer that the market determines the price. But a market is not made transparent merely by declaring it deregulated.

The consumer needs to know what is behind the number.

Crude cost; exchange rate; refining cost, including supply cost with distribution and margins.

And the effect of each movement on the final litre.

The absence of that information does not prove that Dangote is overcharging. It does not prove that NNPC has acted improperly. It does not prove that marketers or regulators have violated the law.

But it leaves the public unable to independently test the claims made by any of them.

That is no longer a minor deficiency.

It is the central weakness of the present petroleum pricing architecture.

The answer is not another government declaration that market forces are at work. It is a system in which those forces can be examined.

NMDPRA should be capable of reconstructing the economics underlying significant movements in the downstream market. NUPRC should be able to demonstrate whether domestic crude obligations are actually translating into physical deliveries. NNPC should be able to reconcile its petroleum supply costs and financial obligations. FCCPC should continue testing the market for conduct that disadvantages consumers or competition.

And Dangote, as an increasingly consequential participant in the market, should be subject to exactly the same scrutiny.

Nobody should be protected because criticism might be interpreted as hostility to Nigerian industry.

Nobody should be shielded because an institution is considered too important to question.

The evidence does not establish that every naira of the latest petrol increases is illegitimate. It establishes something more fundamental: the Nigerian consumer does not possess enough independently verifiable information to determine how the price at the pump is actually formed.

That is where the accountability question begins.

If the price is justified, the arithmetic should demonstrate it.

If crude costs explain the increase, the numbers should demonstrate it.

If exchange rate movements explain it, their contribution should be measurable.

If domestic crude shortages add to the cost, the supply failure should be identifiable.

If refinery margins have changed, the basis should be capable of examination.

If regulatory failure has contributed to the burden, the responsible institution should answer.

This is not an argument against the market.

It is an argument for a market Nigerians can see.

The country removed subsidy, changed its foreign exchange regime, deregulated petrol pricing and invested enormous expectations in domestic refining. The consumer has absorbed the consequences of each transition.

Now the retail price is moving towards ₦1,500 in some markets, even as the refinery gate price stands at ₦1,350. That widening distance makes the question more urgent, not less: what precisely is being added between the refinery and the Nigerian motorist, and who is accountable for each addition?

Nigeria does not need another explanation that the market determines the price.

It needs a market whose price formation can be examined.

The Nigerian consumer has carried the cost of reform, currency adjustment, supply disruption and market transition for long enough. What the country owes that consumer now is not another assurance, but the arithmetic behind the price.

Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst, former President, Nigeria Union of Journalists and Africa Union of Journalists, writes from Abuja.