Heineken Lokpobiri, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), said on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, that the average price of petrol in Nigeria is still lower than in the United States and in Cameroon, Ghana and South Africa, even after the subsidy was removed.

He spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today while defending downstream deregulation.

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The remarks came as Dangote Petroleum Refinery cut its depot price from N1,350 to N1,325 a litre and other marketers trimmed rates in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar and Warri. Pump prices in some places still stood between N1,370 and N1,450 a litre.

“In the US, the average litre of fuel is N1,633. In Nigeria, it’s on the average of N1,430. If you go to Cameroon, it’s N1,959. If you go to Ghana, it’s N2,070. If you go to South Africa, it’s N2,070.

So Nigeria’s average cost of fuel per litre is still lower,” Lokpobiri said. Those naira figures are the minister’s own conversions, given on air.

He said being an oil producer, or hosting the Dangote Refinery, does not by itself guarantee cheaper petrol.

The United States, he said, is the world’s largest oil and gas producer and has the largest refining capacity, yet sells fuel at a higher naira equivalent than Nigeria. What deregulation had done, he argued, was open a new private market.

Without that policy, he said, Dangote Refinery would not have become “the most attractive IPO in the continent.” If the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had kept importing and selling below the market price, the plant could not have survived.

Deregulation, in his account, exists so private midstream and downstream businesses can operate.

He also defended the end of the petrol subsidy. Savings, he said, now flow to the three tiers of government through the Federation Account Allocation Committee. “These days we get 2.1 trillion being shared. This is the first time it is happening.” Before this administration, he claimed, about 27 states could barely pay salaries. States now fund large projects from those savings.

Oil and gas, he added, is a global commodity. Prices in New York and in Nigeria move in the same market. Consumers in America and Europe feel the same shock.

The government would not restore the old subsidy, he said, because the policy is meant to keep investment coming.

He pointed to Dangote’s supply of aviation fuel, and to a Central Bank statement that 85 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign reserves come from oil and gas, as signs of that new economy.

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The political argument is unchanged: pump prices still hurt households, while the minister asks the public to judge the policy by FAAC receipts, private refining and a claim that Nigeria’s average litre remains cheaper than several richer or neighbouring markets.