KEY POINTS
- Dangote Refinery supplied 92 percent of Nigeria’s petrol demand in February 2026.
- Imported petrol fell to just 3.1 million litres per day, the lowest figure on record.
- Domestic reserves now cover a full 31-day national sufficiency level without fresh imports.
Aliko Dangote’s Ibeju-Lekki refinery has done something Nigeria’s downstream sector has never managed: pushed the country’s dependence on imported petrol to a single-digit share of total supply.
New data from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority shows that the Dangote refinery Nigeria petrol supply contribution reached 92 percent of national demand in February 2026. Of the 39.6 million litres per day Nigerians consumed on average that month, only 3.1 million litres arrived from foreign sources, the lowest import figure the country has ever recorded.
What the consumption data shows
Furthermore, three modular refineries contributed an additional 0.368 million litres per day each, reinforcing domestic output. The combined local refining performance exceeded production benchmarks and left Nigeria with a 31-day national sufficiency buffer, meaning the country now holds enough domestically refined fuel to cover a full month of demand without a single cargo arriving from abroad.
According to Billionaires Africa, The Dangote refinery Nigeria petrol supply milestone arrives against a backdrop of significant demand pressure. Actual consumption tracked through truck-out volumes averaged 56.9 million litres per day in February, well above the standard national benchmark of 50 million litres. That gap illustrates both the scale of Nigeria’s fuel appetite and the distance the refinery has already covered in meeting it.
Daily supply from local plants tracked slightly above the consumption figure of 36.6 million litres per day measured at the pump, with the difference absorbed by the national buffer stock.
A structural shift, not just a monthly figure
The significance of the February data runs deeper than a single month’s numbers. Nigeria spent decades importing virtually all of its refined petroleum despite sitting on some of the world’s largest crude reserves, burning foreign exchange and enriching international commodity traders in the process.
That model is now reversing, while what was once managed by an extensive network of foreign suppliers now flows primarily from one domestic facility in Lagos. The question going forward is not whether the Dangote refinery can hold its current market share but how much further output can climb as the facility continues scaling toward its full licensed capacity of 650,000 barrels per day.
