The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) said the estimated pump price of petrol in Nigeria is less than that of neighbouring countries in West Africa.
The development comes despite Nigeria’s fuel subsidy removal, which jerked up the cost of petrol across Nigeria.
On May 29, President Bola Tinubu said the fuel subsidy regime was over – leading to a hike in the pump price of the product across the country.
Speaking during a State House briefing on Tuesday, Farouk Ahmed, NMDPRA’s chief executive officer (CEO), said petrol is currently sold at an average pump price of N950 per litre in Nigeria.
Highlighting the price of the product in some West African countries, Ahmed said fuel costs N2,156 per litre in Cameroon, N1,875 per litre in Chad, and N1,167 per litre in Niger.
In Ghana and Senegal, the NMDPRA CEO said a litre of fuel costs N1,581 and N2,540, respectively.
Ahmed said the cost of the product in the West African countries was converted to “the current naira exchange rate to see what is the estimated cost of that in terms of naira”.
“Some of these countries do not have refineries; some of the countries are landlocked, so they get petrol from the coastal countries and transport it up. We can see why it is expensive, and we can see why sometimes there is cross-border trade because of this aberration in pricing,” Ahmed said.
The NMDPRA CEO also said Nigeria’s average daily fuel consumption decreased to 49.8 million litres from 66.9 million litres as of May 2023.
