The Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers has declared its full support for the Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s plan to reduce the price of cooking gas.
Speaking, NALPGAM President, Oladapo Olatunbosun, said the move aligns with the association’s long-standing advocacy, adding that a price cut would significantly curb the reliance on firewood for cooking, according to The Punch.
During a recent tour of the refinery with local and international guests, Alhaji Aliko Dangote highlighted that the current cost of LPG remains too high for many Nigerians, especially those who resort to firewood due to affordability issues.
Addressing members of the Lagos Business School CGEO Africa, at the refinery in Lekki, the President of the Dangote Group said, “Currently, we do LPG of about 2,000 tonnes per day. You know Nigeria is gradually moving to the usage of LPG. But I believe it is expensive, but right now we’re trying to bring down the price and make it cheaper. If the distributors are not trying to bring it down, we’ll go directly and sell to the consumers, so that people will now transition from firewood or kerosene to LPG for cooking.”
While some industry players have criticised the plan as monopolistic, Olatunbosun defended it, stating that the association has long advocated for lower prices to support the poor. Everything Dangote said at that meeting is actually the words of NALPGAM. We are the ones in front, campaigning for lower prices so that the poor Nigerians can use gas.
“They should stop using logs of wood. And those are the presentations we made to people in authority, to the minister and the Special Adviser to the President on Energy. And I guess they had a meeting with Dangote and persuaded Dangote to consider the poor. That’s why Dangote is saying he doesn’t want poor Nigerians to use wood again so that the price will come down,” he said.
However, Olatunbosun acknowledged the concerns of stakeholders who have invested in gas storage infrastructure, noting that those who built such facilities with loans have valid reasons to feel anxious about the potential impact on their investments.
“If you are in their shoes, you will also exercise that caution, because they built that storage facility with funds that may have a repayment period of about 20 or 15 years. And some of them have not recouped 50 per cent or even 30 per cent of their investments. So, when the price is going to crash and take them out of the market, they have every reason to be agitated and to react.
“But the market is big enough to accommodate everybody. They will also have their own share. There’s a way they can do the market dynamics to favour them. It’s about changing the structure, but nobody whatsoever is against the price coming down,” he maintained.
The NALPGAM president stressed that most Nigerians living in rural areas cannot afford cooking gas at ₦1,000 per kilogramme.
He maintained that the only effective way to boost national gas utilisation is by making it more affordable.
“In Nigeria, it’s only the rich and the middle people who are using gas. We need to get the poor into the net by making gas affordable. As their purchasing power is low, the price should come down. We made an appeal to Dangote. They are the largest producer now in Nigeria. We appealed to them to give part of their profit margin to the poor. Crash the price so that the poor can use gas.
“That is what we advocate. That is our pronouncement as an organisation. We lobby for this. And the man saw reasons in what we are saying because he is always pro-poor. He wants to see how to assist the poor. And that is why he is saying yes, they are thinking to bring the price down so that the poor will stop using firewood,” Olatunbosun noted.
