Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Industries Limited, said on Tuesday, 15 September 2026, that the Dangote petrol price felt high to Nigerians in part because the same product still leaves the country for neighbours who pay more.
He spoke on Arise TV as the Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s latest gantry rate of ₦1,350 a litre worked through to pumps.
Also read: Dangote refinery IPO surges past N1.5 trillion demand boom
“You know, expensive is relative,” he said. “What they need to do is ask, what is the neighbour’s price?” He added that there is “still a lot of smuggling of the same petrol we are producing to our neighbouring countries” because those markets are “about 30 to 50 per cent more expensive than Nigeria.” On Niger he put the premium at 20 to 25 per cent even at ₦1,350. “So, what business are you going to do that will make you have an instant 25 per cent return?”
He described loads booked toward Sokoto that, he said, can be turned toward the Ilela border instead.
Independent reporting from the Borno and Yobe frontier has separately described a busy unofficial trade into Diffa and Zinder while Niger’s own supply stays tight. Cross-border price tables are not always as neat as a television comparison.
One regional tracker recently listed Niger’s official pump well below some of the street rates quoted in border towns. The incentive he named is real where the gap is real. It is not the only reason a litre costs what it costs in Lagos or Kano.
The refinery itself moved first. From 12 September the gantry price rose from ₦1,265 to ₦1,350 a litre, an ₦85, or 6.7 per cent, increase.
Filling stations followed. MRS, Mobil, NIPCO and NNPC outlets in Lagos and Abuja have printed figures from about ₦1,380 to ₦1,430. Northern pumps have gone higher still.
In the same Arise interview Mr Aliko Dangote said the plant could not sell below the traded market, that crude bought in May cost $124 a barrel, and that “we can’t go now and subsidise everything.” He said the company was offering free haulage to some destinations as a cushion.
He then shifted the warning from price to volume. “This crisis in the Middle East is not even about price; it’s about availability.” Asked if Nigerians should fear empty tanks, he said: “We will deliver to Nigeria. Nigerians don’t need to worry. There will not be any shortage from our own part. There won’t be any shortage. There will not be any queues.”
Those assurances land in a week when Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals opened a ₦2.15 trillion initial public offering on the Nigerian Exchange, 4.1 billion shares at ₦525 each, due to close on 13 October 2026. The listing is historic for a Nigerian refinery. It does not freeze the pump.
Local refining was sold to the public as an escape from import queues and subsidy fights. Official figures still show a steep climb from late 2024.
Smuggling, naira weakness, freight, crude spikes and a deregulated gantry all sit in the same price.
Also read: Dangote refinery IPO surges past N1.5 trillion demand boom
Mr Aliko Dangote wants listeners to look over the border. Motorists are still looking at the board above the pump.
David Okere is a journalist and contributor to Freelanews.com, covering business, governance, public affairs, and human-interest stories with a commitment to accuracy, balance, and public interest reporting.
