Dangote Refinery and Nigerian petroleum marketers have offered differing explanations for the recent drop in petrol prices.
Dangote Refinery and Nigerian petroleum products marketers have disagreed on the cause of the recent reduction in petrol prices, according DAILY POST. Filling stations in Abuja recently lowered fuel prices to between N940 and N945 per litre, down from N945 to N955.
The drop coincided with the federal government’s suspension of a planned 15 per cent import duty on petrol and diesel, a measure intended to encourage local production. The spokesperson of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Chinedu Ukadike, attributed the reduction to the policy reversal.
He said, “If the 15 per cent import duty on petrol and diesel was implemented, that is an indirect inflation, an increase in pump price on petroleum products… So now that the federal government had looked deeply at the 15 per cent tariff, it was suspended… That is why you see the prices going down. And it will go down more because the crude oil in the international market is going down.”
However, Dangote Refinery, in a statement on its X account, claimed the drop resulted from its gantry price cut this month, insisting the suspension of the import duty was unrelated. The 650,000 barrel-per-day refinery clarified that the duty would have given it a market advantage at the expense of higher petrol prices for Nigerians.
The disagreement highlights differing perspectives on factors driving petrol price movements in the country’s deregulated downstream petroleum sector.