The government promised a crackdown on cooking gas hoarding back in June. Prices did ease a little after that. They’re still nowhere near where they were before, and households across the country are still cooking less, buying smaller quantities, and going back to firewood.

A nationwide PREMIUM TIMES survey found cooking gas prices climbed as high as ₦2,500 per kilogramme in some parts of the country in late June. That’s up from around ₦1,100 to ₦1,350 just two months earlier. The spike was driven by global supply disruption tied to the conflict involving Iran, Israel and the United States. That landed on top of Nigeria’s own weak pipeline network and its dependence on imported gas.

The government publicly directed regulators and security agencies to crack down on hoarding and diversion. By early July, prices had eased to between ₦1,250 and ₦1,800 depending on where you’re buying. That’s real relief compared to the June peak. It’s also still well above what people were paying in April. In states like Enugu, Imo and Ebonyi, gas is still selling for as much as ₦1,700 to ₦2,200 a kilogramme.

What that means in a kitchen in Uyo or Ikot Ekpene is smaller cylinders bought more often. Meals cooked once a day instead of twice. Firewood back on the stove in households that had switched away from it years ago. A retired teacher in Ikot Ekpene told PREMIUM TIMES she now spends nearly a third of her ₦107,000 pension on cooking gas alone. A restaurant owner near Abuja’s police headquarters said her refill cost almost doubled during the peak, and she started cooking some dishes over charcoal just to keep her prices steady.

The minister of state for petroleum resources called the price surge a national concern back in June and promised the government would crack down on the people creating artificial scarcity. Some of that pressure has clearly worked. Wholesale prices have come down from their June highs. But the underlying reason gas prices swing this hard hasn’t changed. Nigeria still exports a large share of its own LPG and imports what its own households need. Until that does, this is a story that will keep repeating itself every time something happens on the other side of the world.