Edited By Nna Rejoice and Oluwaseun Bose Rufus
If you cook at home in Nigeria, you don’t need anyone to tell you that gas prices have gone crazy. One minute, a 12.5kg cylinder costs 15,000 naira to refill, the next, it’s 22,000 naira. No warning, no explanation, just pain at the retail store.
But here’s the thing, this is not random, it is not a conspiracy, and it’s definitely not going away on its own.
What you see is a system failure. A beautiful, terrifying, interconnected machine breaking down in slow motion, and if you understand how the machine works, you will stop being surprised every time your cooking bill jumps. The Role Of Deforestation In Nigeria’s Environmental Degradation
Table of Contents
The Strange Case of a Gas-Producing Country That Can’t Afford Gas.
Let’s start with the most annoying fact: Nigeria has a lot of gas. We flare it, we export it, we sit on top of it. Yet most of the cooking gas we buy depends, indirectly, on imports and dollars.
Why? Because the big domestic gas plant (NLNG) is structured to sell most of its production to Europe and Asia at International prices.
Whatever is left for Nigerians to use is never enough. So private companies have to fill in the gap by bringing in gas from abroad by paying in dollars, shipping in dollars and insuring in dollars.
That is the first crack in the system.
The Naira Trap: How Currency Instability Cooks Your Food Budget.
Imagine you’re an LPG importer. You buy gas at $500 per metric ton. Last month, the exchange rate was #900 to a dollar. Your cost? #450,000 per ton. This month, the naira crashes to #1500 per dollar. Suddenly, the same gas costs you #750,000 per ton before shipping, before port fees, before moving it to a depot.
Now, are you going to sell at a loss? Of course not. You increase your price immediately. The depot increases theirs, the wholesaler, the retailer and the man who fills cylinders at the local market all increase theirs too.
Within 72 hours, that currency crash has landed on your cooking gas and because cooking gas is not something you can skip, you simply pay or switch to charcoal.
That is what economists call cost-push inflation but in Nigerian reality it is called “how did my gas money disappear?”.
The Ripple Effect: When Cooking Gas Destroys Everything Else.
You might think a gas price hike only affects cooking at home. Wrong.
Think about the woman who fries and sells puff-puff by the roadside. Her gas cost doubles, so she either doubles her price or reduces the size of each puff-puff. Either way, you pay more for less.
Think about the small hotel in a state capital. They cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for guests. Their gas bill triples. They raise room rates or cut potion sizes.
Think about the baker who uses gas for industrial oven. Her cost per loaf jumps. She passes it to her distributor, who passes it to the shop, who passes it to you.
Because food makes up more than half of Nigeria’s inflation basket, a cooking gas spike quickly becomes a food inflation spike and once food inflation goes up, it rarely comes down again.
Why This Keeps Happening (And Will Keep Happening).
You have seen this before. 2022, 2023, 2024. Every few months, another “unexpected” gas price surge.
From a system perspective, it keeps happening because three things have not changed:
One: Nigeria still depends on imported or dollar-priced gas for a large chunk of domestic supply. Until local refining and fractionation grow, global prices and exchange rates will always control your cooking gas.
Two: There is almost no buffer storage. If a ship is delayed or a depot has a problem, there is no giant tank full of reserved gas to smooth out prices. The market panics, and prices jump immediately.
Three: Nobody has built a stabilizer. No special forex window for gas imposters. No price equalization fund. No strategic reserve. The government treats cooking gas like any other commodity, even though it’s a basic survival need.
When you combine these three conditions, the result is predictable: every external shock lands directly on your cooking budget within days.
The Simple Truth
So here is the message that no headline will tell you, the cooking gas price hike is not an accident. it is not a one-off but rather a natural output of a system built for export, not for people.
Until Nigeria builds enough domestic storage, secures a local first gas supply policy, and creates a buffer against currency swings, your gas price will continue to be a thermometer for the economy’s fever.
Every time the naira drops, your food will cost more to cook. Every time global gas prices rise, your cylinder will get heavier to lift and lighter on your wallet. Every time a depot in Lagos has a problem, a family in kano will eat cold food.
That is not fate. That is a structural design and the only way to change it is to redesign the system not just complain about the price.
https://www.pulse.ng/story/why-cooking-gas-price-increased-nigeria-2026052712100023271
