-Deborah Akinyosoye
Petroleum marketers have said the Nigerian government has completely removed the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (petrol), which is the reason the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited increased the price of the product to N1,030 and N998 per litre in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, and Lagos State.
The spokesperson of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chinedu Ukadike, disclosed this to Salient Times exclusively on Wednesday.
Ukadike was reacting to the latest fuel price hike across NNPC outlets.
Salient Times reports that retail outlets owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) adjusted the pump price of petrol on Wednesday in Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
In Lagos, our correspondent observed that many NNPCL outlets sold a litre of the essential commodity for ₦998, about ₦150 higher than the initial price of ₦855.
Our correspondent observed long, snake-like queues at NNPCL outlets at Abule-Egba, U-turn, Abbatoir, and others around the axis as the sudden increase set motorists and transporters in panic-buying mode.
Many filling stations not owned by the NNPCL immediately followed suit as they also incrementally adjusted their pump prices, with many selling as high as ₦1050 in many parts of Lagos.
In Abuja, the situation was not anyway different as NNPCL retail outlets hiked the price of the essential commodity from ₦897 to ₦1,030.
The fresh increase followed the September 2, 2024 increase by the NNPCL. The retail company had hiked the price per litre of petrol from ₦568 to ₦855, sparking outrage.
‘Subsidy Is Gone’
Since the “Subsidy is gone” presidential declaration in May 2023, the NNPCL has gradually increased the pump prices of petrol from ₦184 in Lagos to ₦998.
Though there has not been any official statement from the NNPCL on the latest increase in petrol prices, the NNPCL hinted at a fresh price increase when it began loading its first batch of petrol from the Dangote Refinery in mid-September.
Then, the NNPCL said it got petrol at ₦898 per litre from the private refinery and that it would sell it for ₦950 per litre in Lagos and ₦1,019 in Borno.
Dangote Refinery instantly denied selling petrol to the NNPCL at ₦898 but the retail company insisted that it got petrol from Dangote Refinery at ₦898 per litre and challenged the latter to release the price it sold petrol. The NNPCL further released a breakdown of pricing for Dangote petrol at its filling stations across the country.
Last December, Dangote, Africa’s leading industrialist, commenced operations at his $20bn facility sited in Lagos with 350,000 barrels a day.
The refinery, which was initially bogged by regulatory battles, hopes to achieve its full capacity of 650,000 barrels per day by the end of the year.
The refinery has begun the supply of diesel and aviation fuel to marketers in the country and now petrol.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, faces energy challenges, with all its state-owned refineries non-operational. The country is heavily reliant on imported refined petroleum products, with the state-run NNPC being the major importer of the essential commodities.
Fuel queues are commonplace in the country. Prices of petrol more than quadrupled since the removal of subsidy in May 2023 by President Bola Tinubu, from around ₦200/litre to over ₦1000/litre, compounding the woes of the citizens who power their vehicles, and generating sets with petrol, no thanks to decades-long epileptic electricity supply.