SPECIAL SURVEY: Poor Nigerians paying through the nose for kerosene – despite ‘official’ price of N150/litre

Kerosene, the most used petroleum product among underprivileged Nigerians, is either unavailable or very expensive wherever it is sold, a special survey has shown.
Whereas the product is brought in by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which sells at the subsidised pump price of N150, it is hardly available at the official outlets.

Buyers are forced to patronise roadside re-sellers who charge as high as N500 per litre in some states, particularly in the north-east — officially Nigeria’s poorest region.

In its first Price of Fuel Survey conducted in 13 states across Nigeria and the federal capital territory, TheCable sent researchers to hundreds of retail outlets — otherwise known as filling stations — in search of kerosene.

The team also monitored the general fuel supply situation across the country, collating the prices of other products, such as petrol and diesel, at both the official outlets and the black market.

The general picture shows that petrol scarcity has virtually disappeared after a crippling scarcity across the federation that got to a head in December 2017.

Some stations are even selling petrol below the official price price of N145 per litre, a development informed by how much they get the product from NNPC depots and how fast they want to sell their stock.

Nevertheless, in Bayelsa and Rivers state, the survey showed that all products are sold at ridiculously low prices in the black market — as a result theft of crude oil and illegal refining.

In this report, which is the first in a series, TheCable Petrobarometer presents findings from Anambra, Bayelsa, Borno, FCT, Imo, Jigawa and Kaduna.

The Cable