Rethinking Nigeria’s energy future

It was commendations galore for members of the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Downstream, who, with their chairman, Ikenga Ikeagwuonu, launched what stands as another of Nigeria’s public fora for thinking about the country’s energy future.  That was the recently held ‘2025 Inaugural Annual Downstream Petroleum Week’ (Monday and Tuesday, October 13 and 14, 2025), at the National Assembly. With its theme as ‘Celebrating Our Successes, Confronting our Challenges and Finding Solutions for The Petroleum Downstream Sector,’ it was a forum that brought together as many stakeholders in the industry as could be covered. These comprised policymakers, legislators, regulators, diplomats, unions, investors, civil societies and the media.

This was just as the discussion areas ranged from the ongoing transformation of the country’s energy sector to energy security and market stability, review of the landmark Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, and the apparent ‘elephant in the room’ – the advent in 2023 of the humongous 650,000 b/d refinery by Dangote Industries Limited, as well as the associated monopoly fears. With its humongous capacity, it not only dwarfs the combined capacities of all the other refineries in Nigeria put together, but also fulfills the country’s long desired energy sufficiency, as the country had depended on importation of refined petroleum products since 1975.

It is easily recalled that Dangote Refinery had a recent faceoff with the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) over union politics by its workers, which led to a near asphyxiation of the country’s economy as the union tried to stop the refinery from operating until it met their terms. Needless to state that the rapid response of the country to that emerging contingency amply highlights, among other realities, the strategic position of the Dangote Refinery in the country’s energy calculus. Indeed, courtesy of that refinery’s value to Nigeria as a mitigator of fuel importation, whoever touches Dangote henceforth rubs the country on the wrong side. And that is official!

To the credit of the committee, whereas the forum could as well have been a mere reconciliation session for parties in the industrial action, which featured between Dangote Refinery and PENGASSAN, its elevation to address some of the lingering, deep-seated burning issues in the petroleum downstream of the country’s energy sector, earns them a thumb up. After all, there are as many issues as there are operators and consumers of fuel, as well as other petroleum products in the country.

Seen in perspective, the forum could not have come at a better time than now, given its relevance to the country’s rapidly transforming energy sector. In Nigeria’s history of energy economics, the period from 2021 to 2025 must be the most defining, even if it is for the reason of the positive responses to the challenges of emerging realities during its course.

In 2021, the PIA was enacted rather belatedly after spending as many as 14 years in the legislative mill to come and introduce order in an otherwise disorderly industry, where although professional practice codes comprised the driving wheel, much of the operations and procedures were governed by laws that dated back to the long past colonial era.

Placed in historical context, the Nigerian oil and gas industry, which drives the country’s energy endowments, is one of the most profound legacies of the British colonial administration, which, with the cessation of colonial rule in 1960, did not automatically transmute into a Nigerian oil and gas industry except in name.  For over half of a century after Nigeria attained independence, the sector still retained much of its operational expedients, which were rooted in the industrial culture of the colonial master.  For anyone who is familiar with the British and their mercantilist proclivities of ‘British first’, the fact remains clear – the country does not vacate a once-conquered territory without leaving behind ways and means of continuously syphoning nectar from there, even if, and when the sweetness dries up.

That was the lot of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector while under the vicious grip of colonial era laws until the coming of the PIA. In fact, so ingrained have the colonial era laws been in the mental construct of our industry operators and even governments and host communities that even several years after the coming of the PIA, its implementation is still seen as a pie in the sky for the simple fact that it awarded to the oil and gas host communities statutorily, equitable reliefs that are not based on the whims and caprices of the companies. Hence all through the country’s oil and gas bearing communities, the matter of the PIA is discussed with mixed feelings of paradisiac expectations by the communities on one hand, and on the other hand, apocalyptic trepidation by some of the oil and gas companies operating in the region.

In the final analysis, courtesy of the forum, there is now a rethinking of the country’s energy future, with more areas of the industry now gaining attention. With the committee’s realisation of the need to revisit the problem areas of the industry from its vantage legislative viewpoint, Nigerians will look forward to more proactiveness by the government in respect of  addressing emerging challenges in the sector.

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