MAN: Halting Petrol Import Licenses is Nigeria’s Most Significant Structural Victory in 50yrs
Dike Onwuamaeze
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has described the federal government’s halting of import licenses and empowering local refining industries as the most significant structural victory Nigeria has achieved in its energy sector in fifty years.
MAN stated this last week in its press statement titled, “Fuel Importation Prescription as a Recipe for Deindustrialisation and National Economic Retrogression” that urged the federal government to be wary of neo-liberal prescriptions from the World Bank that could jeopardise or decimate Nigeria’s hard-won domestic manufacturing capabilities.
According to MAN, the path to inclusive growth, a strong Naira, more jobs, single-digit inflation, and a prosperous Nigeria is surer when local industries are protected.
“We should, therefore, reject any policy recommendation that would ultimately lead to the exportation of jobs and importation of poverty,” MAN said.
The statement pooh poohed the World Bank’s April 2026 Nigeria Development Update (NDU) recommendation that Nigeria should open its borders to imported Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to solve an inflationary crisis as structurally flawed, counterproductive, and highly detrimental to Nigeria’s industrialization agenda.
The Director General of MAN, Mr. Segun Ajayi-Kadir said that while the association welcomed the Bretton Woods institution’s clarification that national energy security is paramount in today’s volatile global climate, “we reiterate our fundamental objection to the initial premise that reinstating petrol import licenses is a viable, long-term strategy to avert an inflation spike.
“It is not, and should not be considered as an option.”
Ajayi-Kadir said that the World Bank’s prescription would perpetually constrain Nigeria into the circle of exporting jobs and wealth, and importing poverty.
He said: “The World Bank’s report posited that the suspension of import licenses stifled competition, allowing domestic ex-depot prices to rise, thereby driving up inflation. This analysis panders to short-term bias and does not take into account the foundational macroeconomic realities of the Nigerian economy.”
He said that promoting PMS imports meant returning to the era of fiercely competing for scarce foreign exchange (FX) to fund foreign refineries.
Such depletion of FX, according to him, would depreciate the Naira further, spike the cost of importing critical raw materials and machinery for domestic manufacturers and trigger a far bigger wave of inflation across all sectors of the economy than a temporary 12 per cent differential in fuel pump prices.
He said: “Halting import licenses and empowering local refining is the most significant structural victory Nigeria has achieved in its energy sector in 50 years. Therefore, reverting to importation is to succumb to economic sabotage.”
MAN argued that true and lasting price stability could only be achieved through local production, where internal supply buffers insulate the domestic market from international crude freight premiums and global supply chain disruptions.
It advocated for practical, home-focused, and sustainable measures to mitigate the global energy supply shock and lower consumer prices rather than giving consideration (whether now or in the future) to the short-sighted and destructive route of importing our way out of an inflation crisis.
Ajayi-Kadir, therefore, called for the optimisation of the implementation of crude oil sales in Naira to local refineries, saying that the federal government should mandate total transparency in the domestic pricing matrix and ensure that local refineries receive their full, unhindered daily crude quotas without bureaucratic bottlenecks.
He also urged the government to accelerate the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) Initiative by heavily subsidising the conversion of commercial and industrial transport fleets.
According to him, logistics account for a massive chunk of consumer goods inflation and “shifting from PMS and diesel to abundant, locally sourced CNG is the ultimate inflation-buster.”
MAN said that reliance on liquid fuels for industrial production is a major component of our energy crisis.
It suggested that fixing the national grid and incentivizing captive, off-grid renewable power solutions for industrial clusters will significantly reduce our dependence on costly refined petroleum.
It stated that oil is a critical global resource, and national sufficiency should be the goal of all progressive economies.
MAN added, “Solving for a competitive retail market for PMS should not approximate to promoting fuel importation. Importation of PMS will undermine domestic refining capacity; contribute to the disruption of the foreign exchange market; disincentivize investment in and expansion of local refining, and truncate the relief that Nigerians have started to enjoy since the advent of Dangote Refinery and other local refineries.
“MAN firmly reiterates its position that, as a country, we must strive to produce what we consume and consume what we produce. It is not in our national interest to perpetuate avoidable dependence on imported fuel, when we are numbered among the leading producers of crude oil and have domestic capacity to meet national demand and even export. No, we should not!”
