The blame of the incessant crime of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) smuggling has been pinned on the subsidised rate of the product in the country.
According to the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mele Kyari, petrol smuggling is a result of the pump price difference in neighbouring countries when compared to Nigeria. Kyari said that that lone cause was the reason federal agencies and the Corporation itself had not prevailed over smuggling. Kyari said that the price difference of at least N100 per litre made it difficult to stop petrol smuggling while speaking at the interactive session by the Joint Senate Committee on the 2022- 2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP). He said, “As long as there is arbitrage between the price that you sell and what is obtainable elsewhere, you can be sure that it is very difficult to contain the situation.”
Last March, the GMD announced that the Corporation paid between N100 billion and N120 billion per month to subsidise petrol. Also in that month, a report by Deutsche Welle showed that Cameroonians who smuggled petrol out of Nigeria made huge profits from smuggling. But this does not account for the porous state of the Nigerian borders. The Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) in its most recent newsletter stated that a litre of PMS in Cameroon cost the Naira equivalent of N462.51, in Benin Republic N370.74, in Mali N492.61, in Chad N380.29 while it cost an average of N165.91 in Nigeria.