President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has said that Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption figure is higher than what the country consumes, stressing that the petroleum sector is riddled with corruption.
Dangote said the figure was bloated by some individuals for personal gains, especially during the fuel subsidy era.
However, while marketers agreed with Dangote on Monday that there is corruption in the petroleum sector, they argued that the daily petrol consumption volume fluctuates and cannot be put at a single figure, saying it should be around 40 million barrels per day.
Also, crude oil refiners said there should be fresh findings to determine the country’s real consumption figure; otherwise, the debate and argument would continue for a long time.
Speaking with members of the Global CEO Africa who visited the Dangote Petroleum Refinery recently, Dangote said he did not want to venture into the petroleum sector because of the corruption in the system. According to him, the country’s daily petrol consumption was not up to 40 million litres.
The PUNCH recalls that the Nigerian Midstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority said in the fourth quarter of 2024 that the Yuletide pushed petrol consumption figures to 50 million litres per day.
The Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, Farouk Ahmed, disclosed that the country’s daily petrol consumption hovered around 45 million and 50 million litres at that time.
“The current volume that goes out in the market is ranging between 45 and 50 million litres, including the buffer that we have. But currently it’s ranging between 45 and 50 million litres per day. We see that a lot of activity is going on now because it is normally a high-demand period in the fourth quarter, leading to the yuletide. Still, after that, we can possibly see the consumption go down just because of the prices,“ Ahmed said last year.
In February, the NMDPRA said the figure fell from 66 million litres per day in 2023 to 50 million litres after the removal of the subsidy by President Bola Tinubu.
“Let me reconfirm that from year to year, we saw an increase in the demand for PMS by 2021, 2022, up to 2023, and just before the current administration came in, the daily PMS supply sufficiency was always more than 60 million, averaging about 66 million a day for PMS.
“Following Mr President’s withdrawal of subsidy, the announcement on May 29, 2023, we immediately saw a steep decline in consumption, and between then and as we speak, we’ve continued to do plus or minus 50 million litres. That’s a considerable reduction in volumes,” the Executive Director, Distribution Systems, Storage and Retailing Infrastructure at NMDPRA, Ogbugo Ukoha, said in February.
