Kehinde Fajobi
Dangote Refinery has responded to claims by fuel marketers suggesting that imported petrol is cheaper than its locally refined product, defending its pricing and warning against low-quality imports.
In a statement released on Sunday by Anthony Chiejina, the Group Chief Branding and Communications Officer, Dangote Refinery labelled the recent statements from the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) and other groups as “misinformation.”
Chiejina explained that the refinery’s prices are benchmarked against global rates, aiming to remain competitive with imported petrol prices.
“If anyone claims they can land PMS at a price cheaper than what we are selling, then they are importing substandard products and conniving with international traders to dump low-quality products into the country, without concern for the health of Nigerians or the longevity of their vehicles,” Chiejina stated.
The statement addressed remarks by IPMAN’s national assistant secretary, Yakubu Suleiman, who recently claimed on a television programme that Dangote’s petrol prices were not favourable compared to those of imported alternatives.
“If Dangote has a product selling for ₦1,000, let’s assume, and there’s another place selling for ₦900, we can’t just say, for the sake of our relationship with Dangote, that we’ll instruct our members to buy there,” Suleiman said.
Chiejina, however, asserted that the refinery has gone as low as ₦960 per litre for ship sales, aligning with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s (NNPC) post-deregulation pricing strategy, which previously set benchmarks of N971 per litre for ships and N990 per litre for trucks.
“This set the benchmark for our pricing, and we have even gone lower to sell at ₦960 per litre for sale into ships while maintaining ₦990 per litre for sale into trucks,” he explained.
In his statement, Chiejina also expressed concern over reports of a new depot near Dangote Refinery, allegedly intended to blend and distribute lower-quality products that could harm the domestic refining sector.
“An international trading company has recently hired a depot facility next to the Dangote Refinery, with the objective of using it to blend substandard products that will be dumped into the market,” he said, adding that such practices threaten efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s local refining capacity.
He called on the public to ignore what he described as deliberate misinformation designed to hinder Nigeria’s progress toward domestic refining.
“While we continue with our determination to provide affordable, good-quality, domestically refined petroleum product in Nigeria, we call on the public to disregard the deliberate disinformation being circulated by agents of people who prefer for us to continue to export jobs and import poverty,” Chiejina concluded.