Nigerians still reeling despite petrol’s slide to N1,125/litre

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has lowered its ex-depot price for petrol by N50 per litre, citing retreating crude oil prices after a fragile de-escalation of Middle East tensions, but the reduction offers cold comfort to millions of Nigerians whose wallets have been hollowed out by more than two years of punishing fuel costs.

The refinery, owned by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, said the new gantry loading price of N1,125 per litre took effect at midnight on Wednesday, down from N1,175. Coastal supply prices were also trimmed, dropping from N1,495,215 per metric tonne to N1,428,165.

Since Nigeria dismantled its decades-old petrol subsidy in May 2023 under President Bola Tinubu, pump prices have surged more than fivefold, squeezing households, ravaging transport costs and feeding inflation that, while moderating, remains stubbornly elevated.

For traders who stack goods on wooden carts, bus drivers who can barely cover fuel before they earn a naira of profit, and families who light their evenings with generators, a N50 cut translates into marginal savings at best.

“We are not feeling anything,” said one bus operator in Lagos’s Oshodi district. “When it went up, everything in this country went up with it. When it comes down a little, nothing follows.”

The Dangote refinery, which began supplying the domestic market in 2024, has increasingly positioned itself as a price setter in Nigeria’s deregulated downstream sector. Its periodic announcements of price adjustments, upward and downward, have come to function as de facto market signals in a country where the state-owned NNPC Limited is no longer the sole dominant supplier.

This latest cut follows the global crude selloff triggered by progress in ceasefire negotiations in the Middle East that eased fears of supply disruptions.

Brent crude fell 1.46 percent to $72.66 per barrel by midday Wednesday, while US West Texas Intermediate dropped 1.25 percent to $69.46. Lower feedstock costs, the refinery said, created room to pass savings downstream.

“The refinery remains committed to maintaining reliable product supply and efficient service delivery,” the company said in a notice to customers.

Nigeria’s inflation, driven partly by fuel and transport costs, has left households with sharply reduced purchasing power even as the naira has shown tentative signs of stabilisation against the dollar.

Food prices, which track transport costs closely, remain far above pre-deregulation levels. The central bank has kept interest rates elevated to contain inflation, weighing on businesses that rely on credit.

Analysts say that for the Dangote refinery’s price reductions to meaningfully translate into consumer relief, the cuts need to cascade through the supply chain, from major marketers to filling stations, and that process has historically been slow and uneven. Marketers often absorb margin, and independent retailers in cities far from Lagos depots face additional logistics costs that erode any headline reduction.