Over 4,900 petrol stations across Nigeria have shut down as independent marketers struggle to stay afloat amid volatile petrol prices from Dangote Refinery and importers, according to downstream sector dealers.
The closures follow persistent price fluctuations by the $20bn Lekki-based Dangote Refinery, which has revised the cost of petrol six times between January and April 2025, starting at ₦950 per litre and dropping to ₦835.
This unpredictability, worsened by a lack of access to bank loans and logistics delays, has forced thousands of dealers to either quit or resort to pooling funds to afford truckloads of fuel.
President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Billy Gillis-Harry, confirmed the massive shutdown on Wednesday, May 21.
“PETROAN has over 7,000 retail outlets, and over 70 per cent of those outlets are closed and are out of business today. And the reason is that we struggle to take loans from the bank.
“You buy products from a supplier and then before you can get to your filling station, prices have either increased or it has been dropped for no justifiable reason,” he said.
Gillis-Harry added, “And then they have a few filling stations that would be selling at lower prices, and of course, all traffic goes there, even if motorists have to stay in the queue for hours. So what happens, people are thrown out of business. So what choice do we have?”
To survive, many marketers now opt for suppliers offering “soft landing” deals.
“That situation has forced us to source products from those who can give us a soft landing, and then we can be able to recover and compete, because if someone knows that there are products and he is going to buy and do his business, there is no need to stay on a queue for fuel.
“So this is why we came out to cry about this price fluctuation, we can’t tell what the reason is from our refining giant.
“It is difficult to understand, and we called on the authorities to wade into it quickly because we had foreseen a situation where there may not be any liquidity to stock or restock products. And that would bring scarcity and a hike in price,” he explained.
READ ALSO: Gas Explosion Rocks Port Harcourt Filling Station, Properties Destroyed
The shutdown trend extends beyond retailers. Over 70 tank farms, representing 65 per cent of Nigeria’s 120 approved facilities, have also gone dormant in the last two years, with operators avoiding their services in favour of direct trucking.
The crisis was triggered after the Tinubu administration removed petrol subsidies and fully deregulated the downstream sector in October 2024.
Since then, market competition between Dangote Refinery and fuel importers has intensified, without clear regulatory intervention to stabilise prices.
Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) spokesperson Chinedu Ukadike also raised alarm over mounting losses.
“The uncertainty and disparity in price are always present in any liberalised market. Once the price is not being regulated, you would experience inherent fluctuations, and this makes buyers careful of how many litres they would be buying because of speculations and a price drop,” he said.
He continued, “We have experienced downward reviews in our key performance indicators, and because of our logistics and transportation problems, most of our trucks spend three days on the road before they get to our destination, and when they get there, prices have dropped resulting in losses ranging from ₦300,000 to over ₦1m depending on the quantity.
“You now find out that marketers sell at a loss, and this has remained the only reason why we don’t change prices immediately when they happen. The effect of that decrease is on the marketers to bear. We don’t have buffers or an economic wedge to regain the loss.
“We have been getting losses and losses within the period under review. But we are businessmen, and we are still on the ground. We would continue to push and see how we can maintain our filling station and ensure service delivery to the nation.”
Despite these hurdles, Ukadike said the association’s 20,000 members remain resilient, though they now operate under strict cost-saving measures.
“We have over 20,000 registered IPMAN marketers. Marketers are no longer taking products in bulk; most of us now combine to buy products. You can have three marketers bring together funds to buy products.
“So instead of losing out and shutting down, marketers prefer to just combine money to buy a truck, and that is the way we are operating now. It is skeletal because of the deficit in our financial value,” he stated.
The situation underscores the fragility of Nigeria’s liberalised fuel market, where independent operators, crucial to national fuel distribution, now face extinction without urgent intervention.