Fuel – energyandbuisnessmedia

Fuel Subsidy Removal Face-off

Posted on November 4, 2023May 30, 2025 by Energy and Business Media

When Tuesday October 30, 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu wrote to the Senate to seek approval for N2.18 trillion Supplementary Budget, he did not mince words in pointing at the urgency of the matter at issue.

Urging the Senate to “speedily” approve the budget, it was obvious, even to the law makers that the matter at hand requires expeditious attention.

And at the heart of that request, requiring speedy attention is the implementation of the 15-point Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, signed by the government and Labour Unions Leaders on October 3, 2023 in Abuja.

The agreement includes the Federal Government approval of a wage award of N35,000 to all Federal Government workers beginning from the month of September pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law, suspension of collection of Value Added Tax (VAT) on Diesel for six months beginning from October, 2023.
Federal Government also agreed to vote N100 billion for the provision of high capacity CNG buses for mass transit in Nigeria. The Federal Government also agreed to pay N25,000 per month for three months starting from October, 2023 to 15 million vulnerable households, including pensioners, commitment on the part of the federal government to the provision of funds as announced by the President on the 1st of August broadcast to the Nation for Micro and Small Scale Enterprises. The MSMEs beneficiaries should commit to the principle of decent jobs.

The situation today is that the federal government, in a bid to stave off disruptive labour unrest, has commenced the implementation of the MOU.

The Supplementary Budget which the President sent to the Senate on Tuesday requiring speedy treatment was in a bid to appropriate the needed funds for the implementation of critical aspects of the MOU.

In that N2.18 trillion Supplementary Appropriation is the sum of N210 billion for the agreed wage award and another N400 billion for Cash Transfer to vulnerable households, while another N200 billion is for Seed and Agricultural Inputs and Equipment

Just last week Friday, seven CNG Conversion Centers were inaugurated with more coming up across the country, according to Zach Adedeji, Chairman of the CNG Conversion Committee, while two CNG buses were handed over to Olusesan Adebiyi, the State House Permanent Secretary, at the presidential villa, Abuja.

Provisions are also being made for initial 55,000 CNG conversion kits to kick start an Auto Gas Conversion Programme.

On Refineries, the Presidential Committee had visited the Refineries, ascertained their rehabilitation status and assured the nation that Warri Refinery and Petrochemicals would resume pumping of fuel before the end of the year.

In listening to the yearnings of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the President , Bola Ahmed Tinubu, last week approved a partial waiver of the “No Work, No Pay” order on members who participated in the last 8 months long strike and ordered the release of four months of their withheld salaries.

In a similar vein, in commemoration of the 2023 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty last week, President Tinubu launched the disbursement of N25,000 to 15 million households for three months as a social safety net.

To complement the efforts of the Federal Government and avert a face off with Labour is the commendable moves by some private sector players as exemplified by the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria, DAPPMAN, an Association that threw its weight behind the government’s decision to end the subsidy regime and to deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry. DAPPMAN, leading other oil marketers, are now ready to donate a number of CNG buses to the federal government to help mitigate the effects of petrol subsidy removal.

According to DAPPMAN chairman, Dame Winifred Akpani, the donation is to support the federal government’s post-subsidy palliative measures.
She said: “We collectively agreed that we’re going to work at providing real mass transit buses that work. The ones that run on CNG, which is a compressed natural gas and diesel interchangeably,” the DAPPMAN Chair said.

For this marketers’ association, it is walking the talk. DAPPMAN had been in the forefront of the calls for the removal of fuel subsidy affirming repeatedly that it will put an end to fuel scarcity, eliminate unnecessary hardship on Nigerians seeking to buy fuel, reduce waste and stimulate responsible consumption of this petrol .

Now that the federal government has yielded to the calls and abolished the subsidy, DAPPMAN has also taken the lead in support of government’s bold and creative actions towards cushioning the harsh effects of the subsidy termination.

Another good news is that of the planned injection of fresh $10 billion into the Nigerian economy in the coming weeks. This, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun says would provide the much-needed relief to a liquidity squeeze that has been adversely affecting the Naira.

He emphasized that the substantial inflow is expected to play a significant role in bolstering Nigeria’s economic stability and alleviating the pressures on the national currency.

It is also anticipated that the fresh inflow will help to open the official forex window to oil marketers to accelerate their quick return to business and begin fuel importation to help stabilise fuel supply and distribution.

Other experts have added that government should look into streamlining the cost of importation of fuel by charging the taxes in local currency. This, they insist, will reduce the cost of fuel import and further help to reduce the price of fuel for Nigerians thus complementing government’s much needed efforts in this direction.

Other efforts by the government to boost forex inflow is the $3bn emergency loan the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) secured from Afreximbank.

An analyst said: “Goldman Sachs is an external asset manager to the CBN, so using NNPC’s account that CBN manages with Goldman as an unsecured credit line to tap $10bn for the purposes of clearing outstanding forwards and stabilizing the exchange rate back to the N800 range is plausible,” he said.
“This means that Goldman Sachs will net off gas revenues from WAGPCO and NLNG over an extended period to repay back.”

This approach, which involves an upfront cash loan against proceeds from a limited amount of future crude oil production, was used by the NNPCL to secure the $3 billion emergency loan from Afreximbank.

With all these proactive measures aimed at meeting the agreements reached with labour and to reignite the economy with the ultimate objective of engendering economic growth and alleviating poverty, the contention out there is that the labour/government face off is about to be resolved for the benefits of all Nigerians.

Said Olusesan Ige, an Abuja based Media Content Creator: “The fact on ground today is that the federal government has shown good faith, good intentions, it is obvious, even for the Labour also to see. The issue of ultimatum no longer holds. I think labour will sheath the sword now that all their requests are being swiftly attended to.”

It is difficult to fault Ige’s submission.

Return of fuel queues and return of subsidy?

Posted on October 23, 2023May 30, 2025 by Energy and Business Media

There is palpable tension at petrol stations all over Lagos and spreading fast across the nation. Scarcity looms ominously. And queues have surfaced yet again.

But this, actually, is one of the core reasons stakeholders in the downstream sector of the oil industry insisted on the need to remove subsidy from fuel. The Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria, DAPPMAN, for instance, held that the abolition of subsidy would help to end perennial fuel scarcity, eliminate unnecessary hardship on citizens in need of fuel, reduce waste, eliminate the arbitrage that induces cross border smuggling and stimulate responsible consumption.

These fuel marketers must have taken their informed position in anticipation of a full deregulation, a total abolition of subsidy in which market forces will determine the price of petroleum products. They would have expected that government would create a little if not comfortable leeway for access to foreign exchange by the importers of refined products at the same rate as NNPCL is calculating their forex from crude oil export so that buying petrol would no longer be a subject-matter of serious conversations. They couldn’t have thought that there would yet again be any form of artificial prices for petrol ; a situation where the naira is sliding miserably against the dollar at the parallel market , where there is a surge in the price of crude oil in the international market and the pump price of fuel remains the same, stagnant, in their country, Nigeria .

It will be commonplace now to say that what Nigerians and indeed the fuel marketers are seeing is a different scenario, albeit a dangerous drama.

The hard fact today is that there is pressure on supply of fuel if not full-blown scarcity. A lot of fuel stations are not selling , some are shut down because supply is not forthcoming. And there is no question that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, is to blame. We must call a spade a spade. News emerging from credible sources insists that NNPCL should take responsibility for the irregular supply and flow of fuel from the pumps. According to one unimpeachable source, NNPCL’s fuel reserve has diminished seriously and after a tensed meeting early this week, it resolved to supply petrol to only fuel marketers that own up to 50 petrol stations. For NNPCL to come up with a new criterion they should have allowed at least 6 months period before implementation. This was the same NNPCL that the Group Chief Executive, Mele Kyari, only last week, told Nigerians that his corporation has over one trillion litres of petrol.

And now the behemoth has prioritised only its own retail stations , NNPCL fuel stations, for supplies. And since its stations are far from being enough to provide the fuel Nigerians need in towns and hamlets around the country, delays in supply soon started, fear of scarcity snuck in, and the queues returned. This selective supply to its stations is a crystal sign that NNPCL is not telling Nigerians the whole truth about the state of fuel supply. But this is made worse because the independent fuel marketers who own two, three or four stations across the country, in the remotest of villages, buy their products from DAPPMAN and the big petroleum marketers. With NNPCL starving them of supply and with no foreign exchange to import petrol, the return of queues seemed fated to happen.

However, very critical to this epileptic fuel supply is the issue of unfettered subsidy removal.

Currently, petrol sells at N580.00 or N617.00 per litre . The difference is a matter of the area you are buying your fuel. And these prices have been so for about three months now.

Within this same period, the value of the naira has been steadily sliding downwards, reaching an abysmal low on the parallel market on Friday, October 20, 2023, with one dollar exchanging for N1,160 . The price of crude oil has also been on upward swing . Yet, the pump price of fuel in Nigeria remains same at N580 and N617. One of the oil marketers stated categorically that , ” even if the government provides us with foreign exchange today, nobody is going to be in a hurry to import PMS and sell at N570/617. If you know the landing cost, you’d know it makes no business sense “.

The National President of Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, however threw a blazing light into why the price of fuel still remains the same. In his words “Government still subsidises fuel….In reality today, there is subsidy because as of when the earlier price ( N570 ) was determined, the price of crude in the international market was around $80 for a barrel. But today, it has moved to $93/94 per barrel of brent crude. So, because it has moved, the price of petroleum also needed to move. ” He added, ” And if the exchange rate comes down today, we will not be paying subsidy because the price of petrol will go down. But with the current exchange rate and the price of crude oil in the international market, we have introduced subsidy “. In fact, an analysis of data provided by marketers and some industry stakeholders showed that the federal government could be paying as much as N1.68Trillion from September to December as subsidy.

The PMS dealers stressed that the price of fuel at this time should be between N890/900 per litre and nothing less. Indeed, at $92.51/bbl and N1,160/$ the landing cost is N796/litre, then the ex-depot price should be minimum N820/litre and the ex-pump price should be N890/900 per litre.

If marketers are allocated forex by CBN to import PMS at NAFEM rate – N808.27/$ – closing rate on Friday, 20.10.2023 then the landing cost would be N562/litre, the ex-depot price would be N580/590 per litre and the ex-pump price would be between N630 and N670 per litre, depending on the transportation costs.

But the Group Chief Executive of NNPCL , Mele Kyari insists there is no scarcity and attributed the sudden emergence of queues to hiccups in distribution. As he put it, ” No subsidy whatsoever. We are recovering our full cost from the products we are importing…..”.

Apparently NNPCL are calculating at N750/$ maximum. At N750/$ the landing cost is N508/litre maximum. Marketers cannot compete with NNPCLas there is no level playing ground as there is forex subsidy applied by NNPCL.

Despite Kyari’s denials about the impending turmoil in fuel supply and reintroduction of subsidy, leading players in the oil industry, stakeholders and respected economists have warned that any attempt to bring back subsidy will spell categorical disaster for the nation’s economy. This is the time to face the true market dynamics.

Removal of subsidy they say offers transformative opportunities to both Nigeria’s oil and gas downstream sector and the government.

Dr Uche Chukwuemeka, US based Economist and Business Analyst, says ” the post subsidy removal era offers companies opportunities to quickly reinvent themselves to withstand global economic shifts, capricious energy prices, Nigeria’s macro-economic conditions and opaque forex regime.” As the downstream sector becomes more competitive, he adds, ” companies would need to review their supply chain management, leverage digital technology and have a sound risk management system to manage cost and deliver value to their stakeholders”.

Dr Chukwuemeka who has over 29 years of consulting experience, stated that subsidy can only offer artificial low price of petrol and shield companies from the reality of their profits. ” The government needs to know that there are strategies available to it to keep the price of PMS relatively affordable. ” It must make sure forex through the official window is available to fuel importers, end any form of monopoly and make the cost of import less complex, cumbersome and costly “.

Dr Chukwuemeka averred that removal of subsidy should make fuel more available and not the opposite. This would make the trade competitive and help to reduce price of fuel. ” The government should also reduce the impact of subsidy pain by being an exemplar. It needs to curb the huge allowances of the federal law makers and drastically reduce the size of government bureaucracy and the recurrent expenditure which I understand is N8Trillion in the 2023 budget. That is over 400% increase between 2015 and 2023,”he concluded.

No question, the current emerging fuel scarcity is avoidable. The long lines could be shortened. And to achieve this , every word coming out of NNPCL at this time must be a solemn trust and instantly verifiable . They owe Nigerians the hard truth. NNPCL must banish any spirit of opportunistic monopoly and extend supplies to fuel marketers. Above all, they must consign the whole story of fuel subsidy to the footnotes of our history and point the way to the transformative economic momentum that post subsidy removal era holds for Nigerians and indeed our nation.

Return of Fuel Queues and Return of Subsidy?

Posted on October 23, 2023May 30, 2025 by Energy and Business Media

There is palpable tension at petrol stations all over Lagos and spreading fast across the nation. Scarcity looms ominously. And queues have surfaced. Yet again. But this, actually, is one of the core reasons stakeholders in the downstream sector of the oil industry insisted on the need to remove subsidy from fuel.

The Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN), for instance, held that the abolition of subsidy would help to end perennial fuel scarcity, eliminate unnecessary hardship on citizens in need of fuel, reduce waste and stimulate responsible consumption. These fuel marketers must have taken their informed position in anticipation of a full deregulation, a total abolition of subsidy in which market forces will determine the price of petroleum products. They would have expected that government would create a little if not comfortable leeway for access to foreign exchange by the importers of refined products so that buying petrol would no longer be a subject-matter of serious conversations.

They couldn’t have thought that there would yet again be any form of artificial prices for petrol ; a situation where the naira is sliding miserably against the dollar , where there is a surge in the price of crude oil in the international market and the pump price of fuel remains the same, stagnant, in their country, Nigeria . It will be commonplace now to say that what Nigerians and indeed the fuel marketers are seeing is a different scenario, albeit an unpalatable drama. The hard fact today is that there is pressure on supply of fuel if not full blown scarcity. A lot of fuel stations are not selling, some are shut down because supply is not forthcoming. And there is no question that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, is to blame. We must call a spade a spade. News emerging from credible sources insist that NNPCL should take responsibility for the irregular supply and flow of fuel from the pumps.

According to a source, NNPCL’s fuel reserve has diminished seriously and after a tensed meeting early this week, it resolved to supply petrol to only fuel marketers that own up to 50 petrol stations. For NNPCL to come up with a new criterion they should have allowed at least six-month grace period before implementation. This was the same NNPCL that the Group Chief Executive, Mele Kyari, only last week, told Nigerians that his corporation has over one trillion litres of petrol. And now the behemoth has prioritised only its own retail stations, NNPCL fuel stations, for supplies. And since its stations are far from being enough to provide the fuel Nigerians need in towns and hamlets around the country, delays in supply soon started, fear of scarcity snuck in and the queues returned . This selective supply to its stations is a crystal sign that NNPCL is not telling Nigerians the whole truth about the state of fuel supply. But this is made worse because the independent fuel marketers who own two, three or four stations across the country, in the remotest of villages, buy their products from DAPPMAN and the big petroleum marketers. With NNPCL starving them of supply and with no foreign exchange to import petrol, the return of queues seemed fated to happen.

However, very critical to this epileptic fuel supply is the issue of unfettered subsidy removal. Currently, petrol sells at N580.00 or N617.00 per litre. The difference is a matter of the area you are buying your fuel. And these prices have been so for about three months now. Within this same period, the value of the naira has been steadily sliding downwards, reaching an abysmal low on the parallel market on Friday, October 20, 2023 with one dollar exchanging for N1, 160. The price of crude oil has also been on upward swing. Yet, the pump price of fuel in Nigeria remains same at N580 and N617. One of the oil marketers stated categorically that, “even if the government provides us with foreign exchange today, nobody is going to be in a hurry to import pms and sell at N570/617. If you know the landing cost, you’d know it makes no business sense “. The National President of Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, however threw a blazing light into why the price of fuel still remains the same. In his words “Government still subsidises fuel….In reality today, there is subsidy because as of when the earlier price (N570 ) was determined, the price of crude in the international market was around $80 for a barrel. But today, it has moved to $93/94 per barrel of Brent crude. So, because it has moved, the price of petroleum also needed to move. “He added, ” And if the exchange rate comes down today, we will not be paying subsidy because the price of petrol will go down. But with the current exchange rate and the price of crude oil in the international market, we have introduced subsidy “. In fact, an analysis of data provided by marketers and some industry stakeholders showed that the federal government could be paying as much as N1.68Trillion from September to December as subsidy. The PMS dealers stressed that the price of fuel at this time should be between N890/900 per litre and nothing less. But the Group Chief Executive of NNPCL, Mele Kyari insists there is no scarcity and attributed the sudden emergence of queues to hiccups in distribution. As he put it, “No subsidy whatsoever. We are recovering our full cost from the products we are importing…..”.

Despite Kyari’s denials about the impending turmoil in fuel supply and reintroduction of subsidy, leading players in the oil industry, stakeholders and respected economists have warned that any attempt to bring back subsidy will spell categorical disaster for the nation’s economy. This is the time to face the true market dynamics. Removal of subsidy they say offers transformative opportunities to both Nigeria’s oil and gas downstream sector and the government. Dr Uche Chukwuemeka, US based Economist and Business Analyst, says “the post subsidy removal era offers companies opportunities to quickly reinvent themselves to withstand global economic shifts, capricious energy prices, Nigeria’s macro-economic conditions and opaque forex regime.”

As the downstream sector becomes more competitive, he adds, “companies would need to review their supply chain management, leverage digital technology and have a sound risk management system to manage cost and deliver value to their stakeholders”.

Dr Chukwuemeka who has over 29 years of consulting experience, stated that subsidy can only offer artificial low price of petrol and shield companies from the reality of their profits.” The government needs to know that there are strategies available to it to keep the price of PMS relatively affordable.

“It must make sure forex through the official window is available to fuel importers, end any form of monopoly and make the cost of import less complex, cumbersome and costly “.

Dr Chukwuemeka averred that removal of subsidy should make fuel more available and not the opposite. This would make the trade competitive and help to reduce price of fuel.

“The government should also reduce the impact of subsidy pain by being an exemplar. It needs to curb the huge allowances of the federal law makers and drastically reduce the size of government bureaucracy and the recurrent expenditure which I understand is N8Trillion in the 2023 budget. That is over 400% increase between 2015 and 2023,”he concluded.

No question, the current emerging fuel scarcity is avoidable. The long lines could be shortened. And to achieve this, every word coming out of NNPCL at this time must be a solemn trust and instantly verifiable. They owe Nigerians the hard truth. NNPCL must banish any spirit of opportunistic monopoly and extend supplies to fuel marketers. Above all, they must consign the whole story of fuel subsidy to the footnotes of our history and point the way to the transformative economic momentum that post subsidy removal era holds for Nigerians and indeed our nation

Wage increase: FG tackles fuel subsidy removal hardships

Posted on October 2, 2023May 30, 2025 by Energy and Business Media

The harsh effects of the fuel subsidy removal on Nigerians may be remarkably ameliorated in the months ahead following the Independence Day broadcast of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu where he announced far reaching measures to bring relief the populace.

Tackling the issue of wage award, which the Labour Unions have requested pending the outcome of a new minimum wage currently being negotiated, the President announced an approval of N25,000.00 additional monthly pay to the average low-grade worker for the next six months.

More crucial to confronting the hardships occasioned by the removal of fuel subsidy is transport fares which have gone up by almost 100 per cent in many parts of the country, following the discontinuance of the fuel subsidy regime.

In the months ahead, the federal government will be deploying “cheaper, safer Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses across the nation.”

These buses, which are to operate at a fraction of the current fuel prices, are expected to remarkably bring down the transportation costs, a move economic watcher describe as a masterstroke in the move by the government to rejuvenate the economy.

To ensure the success of this scheme, CNG conversions kits will soon start arriving the country, while training facilities and workshops are to be set up immediately to provide new vista of opportunities for transport operators and entrepreneurs.

It was also learnt that the Depots and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria, DAPPMAN, may further be helping to ease transportation hardships through the donations of a fleet of mass buses to the federal government.

It will be recalled that when the Association visited President Bola Tinubu in Abuja Juen 7th this year, its Chairman, Dame Winifred Akpani, disclosed to newsmen that DAPPMAN will be donating a fleet of mass transit buses to the Federal government as a demonstration of the Association’s support for the deregulation of the downstream sector of the Oil Industry and to help cushion the harsh effects of fuel subsidy removal.

Sources close to the Association disclosed that many of those buses would be delivered to the federal government in the weeks ahead.

Said the source: ” The DAPPMAN initiative is a commendable one that will go a long way in practical terms to ease public transport problem in Nigeria. Now that they are about to deliver, one can only hope that other associations and interest groups will borrow a leaf from the association’s gesture which is aimed to bringing down the transport costs in Nigeria.”

To further bring succour to the poor, starting from this month, the federal government will be extending the social safety net through the expansion of its cash transfer programme to an additional 15 million vulnerable households.

In its June 2023 edition of the Nigerian Development Update, the World Bank disclosed that only about 19.4 percent of Nigerians benefitted from the Cash transfer scheme in the past year.

With an estimated population (World Bank estimates) of 207 million, this meant that only about 40.21 million Nigerian Nigerians benefitted from the Cash transfer scheme.

With the proposed additional 15 million households for the scheme, from this month, the figure of beneficial is expected to rise to over 51 million mark, reaching about 25 percent of the estimated over 200 million Nigerians.

Said Ahmed Hadi, an investment banker: “This will be a good start to tackling poverty if the National Social Register comprising State Social Registers of Poor and Vulnerable Households is cleaned up and made to be a genuine list of this category of Nigerians. Given that the World Bank, in that report, indicated that about 40 percent of Nigerians lived on less than the national poverty line at the end of 2022, if the cash transfer programme of the present government can capture about 25 percent of the vulnerable Nigerians on taking off, it will be a good way to start.”

The Tinubu Government seems to appreciate the fact that bailing the economy out of the challenges thrown up by the subsidy removal will require more than cash transfers to the vulnerable.

Real economic growth and poverty alleviation can only be achieved through production and employment generation. It is in this respect that the President, in his address to the nation, committed his government to providing investment funds for enterprises in order to boost employment and urban incomes. In the same vein, the government is increasing investment in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

Many Nigerians last evening are of the opinion that given far reaching measures to tackle the fuel subsidy challenges as enunciated in the President’s Independence Day broadcast, Labour Union leaders may have good reasons to reconsider their planned indefinitely strike action which is billed to commence on Tuesday.

Indeed, the President has extended the olive branch to the union leaders, giving indications that they earn his respect and he is ready to work with them.

He said: “I also thank members of our dynamic civil society organisations and labour unions for their dedication to Nigerian democracy. We may not always agree but I value your advice and recommendations. You are my brothers and sisters and you have my due respect.”

NNPCL, Marketers Disagree over Queues at Fuel Stations

Posted on August 8, 2023May 30, 2025 by Energy and Business Media

*NNPCL allays fears, insists it has addressed cause of scarcity

As long queues appear in fuel stations in Abuja and Lagos, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) and oil marketers have disagreed over the cause of the fuel scarcity.

NNPCL had Thursday acknowledged the fuel queues in some states of the federation, but assured that things would soon return to normal. Marketers are however insisting that supply is drying up as NNPCl rations fuel to depot owners

In a brief statement on its X/Twitter page, the national oil company stated that the root cause had been addressed, even though it failed to list the challenges it was facing.

In recent days, fuel scarcity had resurfaced across Nigeria as many oil marketers shut their outlets against motorists, citing unfavourable market conditions.

Although the problem was mostly around Abuja and environs in recent weeks, however, it got to Lagos in the last few days, causing long queues and traffic jams in Nigeria’s commercial centre.

But in the statement released by the retail arm of NNPC, it urged motorists to desist from panic-buying, noting that it has enough product in stock.

A number of privately-owned filling stations had also used the opportunity of the scarcity to raise fuel prices from about N615 to N625 in the Abuja axis, even though the NNPCL reduced its own price to N612.

“NNPC Retail Limited notes the appearance of fuel queues in some parts of Lagos and a few other locations around the country. This is due to reduced depot load-out in Apapa, Lagos over a few days, and the root cause has since been addressed.

“We assure all Nigerians that there is ample supply with sufficiency of at least 30 days. Motorists are advised to desist from panic buying as distribution will normalise over the next couple of days,” the NNPCL statement said.

Oil marketers who were recently licensed by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), over 90 of them, had also complained of lack of access to foreign exchange to import products.

Industry players fear that the noticeable emerging queues in many fuel stations may soon spread throughout the country and may become even more intense as oil marketers can no longer replenish their fast depleting stocks.

NNPC Limited, now the sole importer of petrol, sources revealed, has drastically reduced fuel supply to Depot owners, thereby leaving independent marketers who rely on the Depot owners for their supplies stranded.

According to highly reliable downstream industry sources, NNPCL, for reasons that are not yet clear, has now adopted a policy of supplying product to only depot owners with at least 50 fuel stations.

Although weeks back, NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, assured that there was no need to panic as there was enough stock, in excess of 1bn litres, industry players are today troubled by the fact that NNPCL now focuses its full attention on supplying products to only its retail outlets.

There are fears that most retail stations in the country may run out of fuel supply in the days ahead as only about 60 per cent of the Depot owners have up to 50 retail stations, which is claimed to be the NNPC new criterion for being eligible to be supplied product.

Said a source: “What we face now is an imminent collapse of the sector and a return to an era of acute fuel shortage with the attendant disruption to socio-economic life.

“With Depot owners not able to import product owing to shortage of dollar and now NNPC which earlier claimed to have enough stock not supplying to most marketers, you can imagine what the supply situation will be in the days ahead.”

Hardest hit by this latest development are the independent oil marketers who have filling stations scattered all over the country, but rely on Depot owners for their supplies.

“If the independent marketer with two or three stations in some strategic remote areas of the country cannot get supply and the big players can also not receive supplies from NNPC and with NNPC not having enough retail outlets to meet the fuel needs of Nigerians, it is obvious that we are returning to the era of serious fuel crisis”, the source added.

“If indeed there is enough stock as NNPCL claimed weeks back, and realising that the Depot owners are now handicapped and unable to import because of the challenges of forex, what then will inform its decision to be rationing fuel at this critical point in time? NNPCL needs to come clean on this serious issue,” an oil marketers executive noted.

From all indications, the federal government will have to move fast by either fast tracking its strategies of easing the forex crunch to enable Depot owners resume fuel importation or compel NNPC to flood the market with the product, or both.

Subsidy Face-off: Federal Gov’t Speeds Up Implementation of MoU To Avert Industrial Action

Posted on July 4, 2023May 30, 2025 by Energy and Business Media

When Tuesday, October 30, 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu wrote to the Senate to seek approval for N2.18trillion Supplementary Budget, he did not mince words in pointing at the urgency of the matter at issue.

Urging the Senate to “speedily” approve the budget, it was obvious, even to the law makers that the matter at hand requires expeditious attention.

And at the heart of that request, requiring speedy attention is the implementation of the 15-point Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed by the government and Labour Unions Leaders on October 3, 2023 in Abuja.

The agreement includes the Federal Government approval of a wage award of N35,000 to all Federal Government workers beginning from the month of September pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law, suspension of collection of Value Added Tax (VAT) on Diesel for six months beginning from October, 2023.

Federal Government also agreed to vote N100 billion for the provision of high capacity CNG buses for mass transit in Nigeria. The Federal Government also agreed to pay N25,000 per month for three months starting from October, 2023 to 15 million vulnerable households, including pensioners, commitment on the part of the federal government to the provision of funds as announced by the President on the 1st of August broadcast to the Nation for Micro and Small Scale Enterprises. The MSMEs beneficiaries should commit to the principle of decent jobs.