The Federal Government has said the volume of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol consumed daily in Nigeria dropped by 18.5 million litres.
The FG through its agency, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, had reported that about 9.9 billion litres of fuel were consumed in the first five months of 2023 at an average of 66.9 million litres per day.
However, data from NMDPRA showed that post-subsidy removal has pushed the consumption level to around 48.43 million litres per day, a massive drop of about 18.5 million litres.
It will be called that President Bola Tinubu on May 29, 2023, announced the complete removal of fuel subsidy which has now forced the price of petrol to above N500 per litre from around N195.
Further analysis of the data showed that petrol consumption rose above 100 million litres in some days, while it fell to below 10 million litres in a few other days.
A random pick of petrol consumption figures contained in the NMDPRA report, for instance, showed that on March 8, April 20, and May 16, Nigerians consumed 103.6 million litres, 105.02 million litres, and 101.9 million litres respectively.
These were during the ore-deregulation days, as figures from the post-deregulation period indicated that the country never consumed beyond 78.84 million litres all through the 28-day period captured in the document.
In fact, the 78.84 million litres was consumed on June 20, and it was the highest consumption figure during the post-deregulation period, while the lowest figure during the same period was the 470,000 litres that was consumed nationwide on June 11.
