The Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, has explained that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently approved 15 per cent import duty on petrol and diesel to align import costs with domestic realities.
Adedeji made this clarification in a memo to the president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
This comes as a report emerged on Thursday that Tinubu, the president of Africa’s most populous country, approved a 15 per cent import duty on petrol and diesel.
The implication is that Nigeria would pay an additional estimated 99.72 per litre for imported petrol and diesel in the coming days.
Speaking on the fresh tax, Adedeji said the aim was not to increase revenue but to take corrective measures to align import costs with domestic realities.
He stressed that the move was to encourage domestic refinery and tackle
misalignment between local refiners and marketers.
Adedeji added that the current price difference between locally refined products and import parity pricing has created instability in the market.
“While domestic refining of petrol has begun to increase and diesel sufficiency has been achieved, price instability persists, partly due to the misalignment between local refiners and marketers,” he wrote.
“At current CIF levels, this represents an increment of approximately 99.72 per litre, which nudges imported landed costs towards local cost recovery without choking supply or inflating consumer prices beyond sustainable thresholds.
“Even with this adjustment, estimated Lagos pump prices would remain in the range of N964.72 per litre ($0.62), still significantly below regional averages such as Senegal ($1.76 per litre), Cote d’Ivoire ($1.52 per litre), and Ghana ($1.37 per litre),” he also clarified.
This online medium reports that the fresh tax had attracted outrage from Nigerians and stakeholders.
On Thursday, an All Progressives Congress chieftain in Delta State, Ayiri Emami, said the new tariff does not mean well for Nigerians, urging President Tinubu to withdraw the duty.
Meanwhile, economist and chief executive of Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Bismark Rewane, said the tax is good for the country because it is aimed at encouraging local production.
