Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has called on the Federal Government to stop the importation of Premium Motor Spirit and abandon the import parity pricing model, arguing that Nigeria can substantially reduce the pump price of petrol by producing and refining crude oil locally.
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Falana, who chairs the Alliance on Surviving Covid-19 and Beyond, made the call in a statement dated October 11, 2026, while reacting to the Federal Government’s measures aimed at cushioning the impact of high petrol prices.
He referred to the government’s proposed price-modulation mechanism, including a reported ceiling of ₦1,350 per litre on the ex-gantry or landing cost of petrol, as well as the ₦66-per-litre discount being offered by Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited retail outlets under a 30-day promotional arrangement.
Falana questioned how widely Nigerians could benefit from the discount, noting that the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority puts the number of registered filling stations nationwide at about 22,681, while NNPCL operates only about 900 retail outlets.
“Since the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited operates about 900 filling stations out of the total 22,681 registered filling stations nationwide, how will citizens benefit from the 30-day offer of discount?” he asked.
According to Falana, Nigeria’s continued reliance on what he described as the Import Parity Price model means that the price of petrol is tied to international market conditions, despite the country being a major crude oil producer.
He argued that the method assumes that crude oil is produced and refined abroad before the finished product is imported into Nigeria, thereby exposing domestic consumers to international prices.
“It is indisputable that the Import Parity Price method will never reduce the price of petrol sold in Nigeria,” Falana said.
He urged the Federal Government to jettison the model and adopt what he described as a Production Cost Pricing method based on the cost of producing crude oil, refining it, transporting it and distributing the product within Nigeria.
“As a matter of urgency, the Federal Government should jettison the Import Parity Price method which encourages the importation of fuel from overseas and selling it to Nigerians at international price,” he said.
“Since there are refining facilities in Nigeria, the Federal Government should adopt the Production Cost Pricing method which is based on the cost of crude oil production, refining, transportation and distribution in the domestic market.”
Falana maintained that such a system would require crude oil to be produced and refined domestically and would, in his view, offer a more realistic path to lowering petrol prices.
He cited petroleum engineer Professor Izielen Agbon as having estimated that petrol could sell for between ₦435 and ₦687 per litre if the Production Cost Pricing method were adopted, depending on domestic production costs and the prevailing exchange rate.
Falana said the Federal Government had not, to his knowledge, publicly challenged Agbon’s calculation.
He argued that Agbon’s proposal deserved consideration because it differed from the approaches so far advanced by both the Tinubu administration and leading opposition presidential candidates.
“What makes Agbon’s position particularly worthy of attention is that it is remarkably different from the solutions so far offered by President Bola Tinubu and the leading opposition presidential candidates,” Falana said.
The senior lawyer warned the Federal Government against treating its current economic approach as the only available option, drawing a comparison with arguments advanced during the Structural Adjustment Programme era.
“The Federal Government should not behave like the ideologues of the Structural Adjustment Programme that claimed that there was ‘no alternative to SAP,’” he said.
“There are, of course, alternatives for the government to consider in the present socio-economic situation of Nigeria.”
Falana said the central question was whether the government was willing to moderate what he described as its “neo-liberal impulse” and consider alternative economic ideas.
“What is at issue is if the government will apply a brake to its neo-liberal impulse and listen to alternative voices with different economic thoughts,” he said.
He urged the government to adopt an alternative to import parity pricing in what he described as the public interest, insisting that there was no justification for continuing to rely on imported petrol sold at international prices when Nigeria has domestic refining capacity.
“There is no economic or political justification for selling imported petrol to the Nigerian people at the international price,” Falana said.
“It is time that the Federal Government rejected the demand of the World Bank that Nigeria should continue to import PMS from overseas.”
Falana maintained that a shift toward domestic crude production and refining, backed by a production-cost pricing framework, offered a more sustainable route to reducing petrol prices than continued dependence on imports and international pricing benchmarks.
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