Fuel Subsidy: NNPC raises pump price to over N500

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited implemented the long-awaited fuel pump price on Wednesday, bringing clarity surrounding pricing following the controversial subsidy reduction, which costs over $10 billion per year.

Chronicle NG reports that this new change is also observed in Lagos, where NNPCL now retails petrol for N488 per litre at its station on Kingsway Ikoyi, while the NNPC Mega Station, Lagos Bus Stop, at Port Harcourt now sells for N511 per litre.

Today, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited is the sole supplier of petrol in Nigeria, and it is therefore expected that other marketers would follow Nigerian National Petroleum Company’s lead and alter their own pump prices this morning.

Analysts say since Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has effected different pump prices for different cities, this may mean that not only has subsidy gone but also that the wasteful price equalization mechanism that ensured petrol had the same official price all over Nigeria is also gone.

It is unclear what foreign exchange rate Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has used to arrive at its pump price, but it could be around N600/$.

President Bola Tinubu, who resumed at Aso Rock on Tuesday afternoon, held a long meeting with the CEO of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and CBN governor Godwin Emefiele on the vexed matters of fuel subsidy and the multiple foreign exchange rates.

This was after Tinubu announced in his inauguration speech that subsidy were gone and that the CBN had been mandated to abrogate the multiple exchange rate regime.