Nigeria’s retail petroleum sector has continued to grow alongside the country’s demand for fuel. Daily petrol consumption rose from 55.6 million litres in 2020 to 61.9 million litres in 2021, an increase of 11.3%. It reached 66.7 million litres in 2022, representing a further 7.8% increase and a total rise of approximately 20% over the period.

This level of consumption reflects the size of Nigeria’s vehicle population and the extensive network of retail stations required to serve motorists and businesses across the country. Each day, these stations process large volumes of fuel, payments and operational records, creating a complex retail system that must account for every litre received, stored and sold.

At the end of the day’s operation, a station manager must reconcile the volume of fuel dispensed, the remaining volume of each product stored in the station’s tanks, payments received through different channels, expenses recorded during the day and the amount expected in the station’s accounts.

These records spread across paper notebooks, spreadsheets, payment terminals and cash, establishing an accurate view of the business can take hours. The task becomes more difficult when fuel prices change over time and vary across regions or stations, requiring operators to reconcile transactions against the correct price at the point of sale. For businesses managing several locations, the problem multiplies.

For decades, petroleum retailers in Nigeria have managed these closely connected activities through separate records, tools and systems. Payment services and accounting products have become widely available; however, they often address individual parts of the business and do not account for the relationship between fuel inventory, pump activity, sales, shifts, payments and financial reconciliation.

Smartflow built Smarteye to bring these activities into one cloud-based operating platform.

The enterprise software product allows petroleum retailers to monitor station activity, manage inventory with automated alerts, track sales and payments, prepare reports and maintain financial records across one or several locations. It also provides self-service capabilities intended to give customers more direct access to selected fuel retail services.

Smarteye is now deployed across major fuel outlets in Lagos and is used by petroleum retailers and large organisations managing fuel operations across multiple locations. Its customers include

TotalEnergies, Ardova, Enyo and Dufil. The platform has also expanded beyond Nigeria into Kenya. Building a platform for an industry this complex required more than adapting existing business software.

As Lead Software Engineer at Smartflow, Prosper Ibe led the development and launch of Smarteye, defining its technical direction and overseeing the translation of petroleum retail operations into a connected digital platform. Under his technical leadership, Smarteye developed into a product adopted by some of Nigeria’s leading petroleum retailers and major enterprises, including TotalEnergies, Ardova, Enyo and Dufil, before expanding into Kenya.

The Guardian spoke with Prosper Ibe at Smartflow’s Lagos headquarters about the problem Smarteye was built to solve, the decisions behind its design, lessons from its early adoption and the difficulties involved in bringing fuel inventory, sales, payments and financial reporting into one system.

I recently visited a fuel station in Lagos where customers could serve themselves, something I had not encountered before in Nigeria. Curious about the technology behind it, I made some enquiries and learnt that the system was powered by Smarteye. When I discovered that you led the development of the platform, which has since been adopted by major businesses in Nigeria and expanded into Kenya, I found the story fascinating. I wanted to understand what it takes to build a digital product for an industry as complex as petroleum retail. Take us back to the beginning. What problem was Smartflow trying to solve when it started building Smarteye?

Prosper Ibe: The problem we set out to solve is visibility. We wanted retail operators and business owners to be able to see, at any moment, what was happening across their stations, from sales and inventory levels to pump performance. Before the introduction of Smarteye, this was almost impossible. The manager or business owner has to call the manager, and this takes time and could stall operations for the day. Getting this type of report is usually at the end of the day. With Smarteye, business owners and executives have a dependable view of the business at any point in time.

This is interesting. How is Smarteye built, or what happens inside Smarteye when a station records a sale?

Smarteye is a cloud-based platform, but a lot happens behind the scenes whenever a customer buys fuel. The platform is one part of a wider system that also includes Velox, our payment solution; SmartPump, an embedded technology installed in the fuel pump; and SmartTank, which monitors the volume of fuel in the storage tank.

The process begins when a customer makes a payment through Velox. Once the payment is confirmed,

Velox communicates with SmartPump, which authorises the pump to dispense the purchased quantity of fuel. After dispensing is completed, SmartPump sends the transaction details to Smarteye. This includes information such as the station, pump, product, quantity dispensed, amount paid and time of the transaction.

Smarteye acts as the brain of the entire system. An operations manager can log in and see sales across every station and individual pump. They can update fuel prices remotely, disable a pump when necessary, monitor station performance and view available inventory.

SmartTank also sends fuel-level and volume readings to Smarteye every two minutes. This gives operators a current view of what is stored in each tank and helps them plan fuel deliveries before stock runs too low.

So, what appears to the customer as a simple fuel purchase involves payments, pump control, inventory monitoring and transaction reporting communicating in real time. Smarteye brings all of that information together and gives the operator one place to manage the entire operation.

That’s an intriguing technology. I can see Smarteye has been gaining traction since it launched. What was the most difficult part of designing the product?

The hardest part was not the code. It was discovering the industry model clearly enough to represent it in software. We spent a considerable amount of time understanding how different companies operate, what happens before, during and after a transaction. We also had to recognise that two petroleum retailers might run similar businesses in different ways. The difficult decision was determining which parts of those operations were common across the industry and could form the foundation of the product, while still allowing each business to retain the practices that were specific to it. In effect, we were trying to represent a large and complex industry through one adaptable digital model.

Technology presented another challenge. We had to build several components from the ground up, particularly SmartPump, the embedded technology that communicates directly with the fuel pump. It had to operate reliably in a physical environment and communicate accurately with the payment and cloud systems.

Once we had a clear product model and had resolved those core technology decisions, many other parts of the system became easier to build. From that point, the focus shifted to execution, testing the product in real stations and improving it as we learnt from operators.

I tried the self-service option at one of the stations using Smarteye, and it was a completely different experience. I simply drove in, interacted with the system and bought fuel without depending entirely on an attendant. What led to the introduction of self-service, and how has it changed the way customers use fuel stations?

I also enjoy using the self-service option in a retail outlet I drive to. Self-service creates a more direct relationship between the customer and the retailer. Depending on the service available, customers can initiate a purchase directly rather than relying entirely on manual assistance. For operators, self-service reduces the amount of routine coordination required at the station and drives down operations costs. We now have a fuel retail outlet that is fully automated with only the self-service option, and it has been a game changer. The intention is not to remove people from the operation. It is to give customers more control where that is useful and allow station staff to concentrate on activities that still require their attention. It also creates opportunities for petroleum retailers to understand customer activity better and offer more consistent services across locations.

What remains difficult about digitising petroleum retail?

Trust remains one of the largest challenges. When a business has relied on manual records and direct supervision for years, moving important operational information into software is not merely a technology decision. The people using the product have to trust that the records are accurate, that the system reflects what happened at the station and that they can recover when something goes wrong. Adoption also depends on training and usability. We have seen a positive shift in adoption across users and businesses, and we are continuously improving the product and making it more accessible and easier to use.

Those are important points. So, finally, over the next five years, where do you see petroleum retail technology in Nigeria?

I see a petroleum retail industry that is far more connected than it is today. More operators will be able to monitor their stations in real time, manage prices across different locations and make decisions using live operational data rather than waiting for reports at the end of the day. I also expect self-service to become more common. Customers will have more control over how they purchase fuel, make payments and interact with stations. The experience should become faster, more transparent and less dependent on manual processes. There will also be more integration between pumps, tanks, payment systems and business software. I believe petroleum stations will gradually move from being places where customers only buy fuel to becoming more digitally enabled retail locations. Operators will be able to offer more services, understand their customers better and create a more consistent experience across different stations.