Petrol Stations hike price amid Dangote, NNPCL dispute

Filling stations in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, have increased the price of petrol from N860 to N930 per litre, making consumers pay at least N70 more than what they paid days ago.

Following the development, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) appealed to President Bola Tinubu to use his good offices to ensure the continuous implementation of the naira-to-crude deal between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Dangote Petroleum Refinery and other indigenous refineries.

Some of the filling stations in Lagos, such as MRS Oil & Gas, Ardova and Heyden, with special agreements with the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, adjusted their pumps yesterday to the new price.

Matrix Energy, North-West Petroleum, TotalEnergies, Mobil, Bovas, and Enyo, among others, followed suit. Penultimate Monday, the landing cost of petrol hit N888.89 from about N800.

But a check, yesterday, indicated that MRS, which hitherto sold at N860 per litre, jacked up its price to N930 in Lagos.

Similarly, retail stations in Lagos and the neighbouring Ogun State sold petrol at between N960 and N970 per litre.

The new price regime followed an announcement by Dangote of temporarily halting the sale of petroleum products in naira.

“This decision is necessary to avoid a mismatch between our sales proceeds and our crude oil purchase obligations, which are denominated in United States dollars,” the company stated earlier last month.

The refinery said it remained committed to serving the Nigerian market and would resume the sale of its product to the local market in naira as soon as it received crude cargoes from the NNPCL in naira.
ACCORDING to HURIWA, any change in the arrangement would automatically result in sudden and indiscriminate hikes in the pump prices of petroleum products.

In a statement by National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, the rights organisation urged Tinubu to direct his ministers to agree with those concerned to continue the naira-to-crude deal.

He stated: “In the spirit of the Sallah celebrations and given the public shows of supplications to God by the President and other public office holders as part of the fasting period, we are praying President Tinubu to direct his Coordinating Minister of the Economy and the Minister of Finance to transparently and rapidly reach agreement to continue the naira-to-crude deal with local crude oil refineries, including Dangote.”

“We make this public supplication because any alteration to this deal would mean excruciating hardship and the massive affliction of poverty on millions of the already suffering, struggling and multi-dimensionally poor households.”

HURIWA argued that political leadership is not about theatrics or empty rhetorics, but that leadership ought to be embedded in the virtues of compassion, care for humanity and implementation of economic policies with a human face.

The organisation reminded Tinubu that last year, the World Bank projected that millions of Nigerians automatically would become multi-dimensionally poorer than they were in 2018 because of the excruciating cost of living crisis in the country.

Recalling that the six-month naira-to-crude deal, which started in October 2024, officially ended yesterday. HURIWA advocated humane and compassionate governance from Tinubu