Wednesday 1 April, 2026

What the war in the Middle East has to do with the bus fare in Lagos

If someone at home has called you in the last two weeks to say that transport is expensive, food is more expensive, or money isn't going as far as it should. This is the explanation they couldn't give you.

It starts with a war they're not fighting.

In January 2026, the Dangote Refinery was selling petrol at just under N1,000 per litre. The ongoing conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran pushed crude oil above $110 a barrel in March. The refinery, which operates without any price buffer or government stabilisation mechanism, passed every dollar of that increase through to marketers. Marketers passed it to filling stations. Filling stations passed it to drivers. Drivers passed it to everyone who moves.

Five price hikes in a single month. Peak pump prices of N1,332 to N1,367 per litre. An 84 percent increase since December.

A partial rollback happened on 31 March. Prices are now around N1,280 to N1,296 at the pump. That is still 72 percent above December.

Here is what that means for the money you send home.

When fuel goes up, transport fares go up. When transport fares go up, market food prices go up. Everything that arrives at a market arrived in a vehicle. When market prices go up, the same amount you send covers less. Your N50,000 transfer this month is doing the work that N29,000 was doing in December. The purchasing power didn't move. The costs around it did.

This is the architecture nobody explained when the Dangote Refinery opened. Nigeria removed the fuel subsidy in 2023 and replaced it with a domestic refinery that was supposed to provide stability. What nobody built in was a price buffer. The refinery is fully exposed to global crude prices. When the Middle East stabilises and crude falls, prices may come back down. But "may" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Nigeria recorded the largest petrol price increase in Africain February and March 2026. The country with the refinery that was supposed to protect it from global shocks absorbed those shocks faster than any of its neighbours.

The Dangote Refinery was supposed to protect your family from fuel price shocks. Instead it became the fastest way for a war in the Middle East to empty their transport budget.

That is not a criticism of the refinery's engineering. It is a description of how deregulated energy markets work when there is no buffer. Someone absorbs the shock. In Nigeria right now, that someone is the person at the bus stop.

If you're planning to send money this month, send it sooner rather than later. Crude prices remain volatile. The partial rollback of last week is real but thin. The conditions that produced five hikes in March haven't changed.