Rising cooking gas costs burn Nigerians ahead of Sallah rush

Cooking gas prices have climbed sharply across Nigeria, with retail rates hitting as high as N1700 per kilogramme in some locations as households and food vendors stock up ahead of this week’s Eid-el-Kabir celebrations, exposing once again the fragility of a supply chain that buckles each time demand spikes.

The federal government has declared May 27 and 28 public holidays for the Sallah festivities, a period when Nigerian families traditionally ramp up cooking for large gatherings, feasts and commercial food preparation.

That surge in consumption has collided with an already strained depot system, driving prices to levels that are stretching household budgets across the country’s major urban centres.

BusinessDay’s findings showed that depot loading has become increasingly constrained, particularly in Lagos, Nigeria’s primary liquefied petroleum gas distribution hub.

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Industry sources confirmed that as of Tuesday, only a handful of depots were able to load LPG at all. Techno Oil stood out as the sole active supplier in Lagos, offering product at roughly N1,250 per kilogramme, yet even at that level, operators described available volumes as lean and insufficient to meet the market’s rising needs.

Across Lagos, Ogun State, Ibadan and other major population centres, retail prices have spread into a band between N1,600 and N1,900 per kilogramme.

Several filling points have already crossed the N2,000 mark, a threshold that energy pricing platform Petroleumprice.ng had flagged as a near-term risk in an earlier assessment of tightening depot conditions, a warning that has since materialised.

Findings showed that a household relying on a 12.5 kilogramme cylinder now faces a refill cost that can exceed N25,000 at current peak prices, a sum that represents a significant share of the monthly income for millions of working families.

The burden falls disproportionately on lower-income households, many of whom had only recently shifted to cooking gas from kerosene and firewood as part of the country’s push toward cleaner cooking fuels.

Marketers said the supply crunch is not simply a seasonal phenomenon, but a structural problem playing out in real time. Securing steady loading allocations from depots has become increasingly difficult, forcing retailers to scramble for whatever limited stock is available and, in many cases, to price that scarcity into what consumers pay at the cylinder.

The result is a retail market characterised by sharp regional price variation, frequent product unavailability and a general atmosphere of uncertainty that undermines planning for both businesses and households.

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Industry operators also point to upstream and import-side pressures compounding the domestic logistics problem. Rising international LPG benchmark prices and irregular inflows into key storage facilities have tightened the overall supply picture, leaving the local market exposed to shocks at multiple points along the chain.

The Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers has issued repeated warnings in recent months that erratic supply patterns are destabilising pricing and eroding household access to clean cooking energy, concerns that the current Sallah-period crunch has brought into sharp relief.

NALPGAM says its members across the country are reporting persistent supply shortages at depots, mounting logistics bottlenecks, and operating costs that have become unmanageable. Where the product is actually available, the prices are out of reach for ordinary Nigerians.

The consequence is a visible reversal of consumer behaviour: households that had adopted LPG are returning to firewood and charcoal, a shift with serious downstream implications for public health, urban air quality, and Nigeria’s commitments under international climate frameworks.

The association did not mince its words on the stakes involved.

“This situation is seriously eroding the substantial progress made by the Government on the usage of clean energy in the country,” the statement read.

The roots of the crisis are multiple and, according to NALPGAM, structural. Domestic LPG allocation to the Nigerian market has been insufficient to meet demand. Import pipelines are constrained by what the group describes as unresolved bottlenecks in storage, transportation, and terminal operations. Regional distribution is uneven, leaving parts of the country critically underserved even when supply exists elsewhere in the system.

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The association has directed its appeal at a wide range of actors: the federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NNPC Ltd, domestic producers, depot operators, and international suppliers. Its demands are specific: increase domestic allocation, improve distribution equity across regions, reduce import friction, and deploy strategic pricing interventions at the retail level.

Beyond kitchen economics, NALPGAM is flagging broader systemic risks. Accelerated food inflation is the most immediate concern, given how directly cooking fuel costs feed into the price of prepared food across Nigeria’s enormous informal food sector.

Beyond that, the group warns of business closures in the retail LPG segment, job losses along the distribution chain, and a potential collapse of investor confidence in an industry that h