The Director-General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Dr Chinyere Almona, has expressed concern over the rising cost of petrol and diesel as the cost of the latter rose to about N2000 per litre yesterday.

Petrol currently retails between N1350 and N1400 per litre.

Noting that the trend is unsustainable for businesses, she urged the government to step into the situation to prevent the total collapse of the real sector.

She said the government’s intervention must be anchored on strategic market stabilisation rather than price suppression. Immediate priorities, she added, should include targeted, time-bound support for critical sectors such as transportation, agriculture and MSMEs to mitigate inflationary spillovers, while avoiding inefficient blanket subsidies.

More critically, she said, stabilising the naira through improved FX liquidity and policy coordination is essential, given the strong exchange-rate pass-through into fuel pricing.

She also urged the government to signal policy clarity and consistency to reinforce investor confidence in the deregulated regime.

“While higher crude prices typically imply fiscal upside, Nigeria’s benefits remain constrained by production limitations and structural inefficiencies. The dominant impact is adverse, cost-push inflation intensifies, industrial competitiveness weakens and household purchasing power declines.

“Energy costs, being a major component of production and logistics, will continue to erode business margins and dampen economic expansion, reinforcing broader macroeconomic vulnerabilities,” she said.

She urged the Federal Government and Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to urgently enforce domestic crude supply obligations under the Petroleum Industry Act, ensuring consistent allocation of over 300,000 barrels per day to local refineries, particularly the Dangote Refinery.

This, she said, must be complemented by a transparent and scalable naira-for-crude framework to reduce FX exposure, lower production costs and stabilise output.

“At the regulatory level, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority must implement a clear, rules-based pricing framework that reflects verifiable cost fundamentals while preventing abuse of market dominance without undermining deregulation.