The price of cooking gas in Nigeria has climbed sharply enough that retailers are now breaking ranks with producers — publicly demanding that liquefied petroleum gas be kept at home before it is shipped abroad. The call, which came through industry trade groups, lands at a moment when a 12.5kg cylinder that sold for under ₦5,000 two years ago is now pushing past ₦20,000 in many parts of the country.
The squeeze is hitting an estimated 40 million Nigerians who rely on LPG as their primary cooking fuel, a number that grew significantly during the federal government's decade-long campaign to wean households off firewood and kerosene. Low- and middle-income families in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Kano — who adopted the 'clean cooking' transition in good faith — are now either rationing gas or reverting to charcoal, with the associated health consequences that policy was designed to eliminate.
Retailers say the core problem is straightforward: Nigeria produces LPG but does not consume it first. Producers and terminal operators, incentivised by stronger export prices and a more stable dollar-denominated revenue stream, are diverting supply to international buyers while the domestic market runs short. When local supply tightens, prices spike — and it is the final retailer, not the producer, who faces an angry customer at the cylinder exchange point.
Nigeria sits on some of the largest natural gas reserves in Africa, and the country produces LPG as a byproduct of crude oil and gas processing at facilities including the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas plant in Bonny, Rivers State, and various associated gas infrastructure in the Niger Delta. The Domestic LPG Penetration Programme, launched under the Buhari administration and carried forward since, set an ambition of increasing per-capita LPG consumption from under 2kg per person annually to 15kg by 2030. That target is now under serious threat.
Retailers' associations have called on the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to enforce a domestic supply obligation — a mechanism that would legally require producers to meet a defined percentage of local demand before exporting. They argue that without a regulatory floor, market forces will consistently favour export over domestic supply, and no amount of public campaigning for clean cooking will survive the economics of unaffordability.
Whether the NMDPRA moves quickly is the question that will define the next few months for millions of Nigerian households. Regulators have historically been slow to impose supply mandates on producers, wary of discouraging investment in gas infrastructure. But with inflation already eroding household purchasing power and the naira still fragile, the government's tolerance for a politically visible commodity crisis at the kitchen — where the pain is immediate and daily — may be shorter than usual.
For the mother in Ojota rationing her last quarter-cylinder, the debate about export incentives and regulatory architecture is abstract; what is concrete is that the gas she was told to switch to is now further from her reach than the firewood she was told to leave behind.
