Around 10,000 petrol dealers are set to shut down as fuel consumption drops to 4.5 million liters per day, from over 60 million lire’s.
Official figures from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority reveal that fuel consumption dropped to 4.5 million litres per day in August 2024, down from 60 million litres per day in May 2023—a staggering 92 per cent decline, The Punch reports on Sunday.
The statistics also show that only 16 out of the 36 states received fuel from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited in August, leading to widespread shortage.
Since May 29, 2023 when President Bola Tinubu announced petrol subsidy removal, petrol prices have surged by about 488 per cent, rising from N175 to over N1,000 by October 2024.
The leadership of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria said the drop in fuel consumption had caused the association huge losses, adding that about 10,000 of its members were on the verge of shutting down.
In an interview with Sunday Punch, the PETROAN National Public Relations Officer, Dr Joseph Obele, said the cost of a truckload of PMS had moved from N7 million to N47 million in the last 16 months.
He said, “Three days ago, there was a meeting at the national headquarters of PETROAN. At the meeting, there was, an indication that about 10,000 of our members would quit business in the next 45 days because their trading capital had been severely affected.”
