According to President Bola Tinubu, the nation imports N2 trillion worth of gasoline and fuel each month. This was said by Tinubu in a recent statewide broadcast addressed to Nigerians.
The President claimed that even though Nigeria has an abundance of gas and oil resources, his administration had seen a nation that was solely reliant on oil, ignoring its gas riches in favor of fuel subsidies.
Fuel subsidies were eliminated by Tinubu on his first day of office, which caused the price of gasoline to rise from roughly N200 per litre in May 2023 to roughly N700 at the pump today. Consequently, the President stated that in an effort to alter perceptions, his administration has made investments in compressed natural gas.
“Fellow Nigerians, we are a country blessed with both oil and gas resources, but we met a country that had been dependent solely on oil-based petrol, neglecting its gas resources to power the economy. We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for and subsidise its use.
“To address this, we immediately launched our Compressed Natural Gas Initiative, to power our transportation economy and bring costs down. This will save over N2tn a month, be used to import PMS and AGO and free up our resources for more investment in healthcare and education,” Tinubu stated.
He reiterated that his administration would be distributing one million kits of extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicle owners transporting people and goods and who currently consume 80 per cent of the imported petrol and diesel.
“We have started the distribution of conversion kits and the setting up of conversion centres across the country in conjunction with the private sector. We believe that this CNG initiative will reduce transportation costs by approximately 60 per cent and help to curb inflation,” Tinubu disclosed.
Under the current government, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited is the only company authorized to import gasoline into Nigeria, however permitted individuals have been bringing in diesel.
Nigeria is the biggest oil producer in Africa, but because of its limited refining capability, it is dependent on imported petroleum products.
Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the president of the Dangote Group, declared in May that as soon as his refinery started producing gasoline, Nigeria will stop importing petroleum.
However, it has been reported that foreign oil corporations have refused to deliver crude to the Dangote refinery, leading to difficulties with the fuel.
Officials of the Dangote refinery stated that the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority had insisted on fuel importation, granting licences to people to import dirty fuel into Nigeria.
Reacting, the NMDPRA Chief Executive, Farouk Ahmed, denied the allegations, stating that it was the Dangote diesel that had a higher sulphur content than the imported ones.
The NMDPRA boss warned that Nigeria cannot rely heavily on the Dangote refinery for its fuel supply, saying the importation of fuel would continue.
According to Ahmed, the refinery had requested the regulator stop giving import licences to other marketers to be the only fuel supplier in Nigeria, saying he refused to grant the request.
Meanwhile, Tinubu waded into the issue and ordered the supply of crude to Dangote in local currency, saying that would save the country over $660m monthly.
