Dangote's petrol moved twice in nine days. Nigerians in different states are still paying different amounts for fuel coming out of the same refinery.

Dangote Petroleum Refinery raised its ex-gantry petrol price by N85 on September 12, taking it from N1,265 to N1,350 a litre. Nine days later, on September 21, it cut the price by N25, to N1,325, still N60 above where it stood before the September 12 increase.

What that single gantry price becomes at the pump depends heavily on where the pump is, since transport, distribution and marketer margins are added downstream. Lagos: N1,385. Abuja: N1,430. Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Enugu, Ogun, Rivers: N1,390. Adamawa: N1,447. Borno: N1,452. Taraba: N1,445. Same day. Same gantry price. Sixty seven naira apart, Lagos to Borno.

Distance from the refinery accounts for some of that. Transport and logistics costs genuinely rise the further product travels inland from the coastal facility. The refinery has repeatedly linked its own adjustments to movements in crude and replacement costs. The September 21 reduction, for instance, came as Brent crude fell to around $100.40 a barrel, a decline of more than three per cent tied to renewed expectations of US-Iran diplomatic engagement. The September 12 increase came as Brent had climbed above $105. Both moves track a crude story the refinery can point to. What the public price announcements don't provide is enough detail to reconstruct the full cost calculation behind either adjustment, so how closely the size of each move matches the size of the crude swing behind it isn't something this reporting can settle.

What's measurable is the outcome. Since its N1,165 price at the start of August, Dangote's gantry price is now N1,325, a rise of N160, or roughly 14 per cent. Marketers who buy at the gantry price pass their own margins downstream, which is where the state-by-state gap widens further. Bovas stations in Lagos were still selling at N1,280 days after MRS and NNPC outlets in the same city had already moved to N1,385 and above, the ordinary lag of stations working through fuel bought at the old price.

Dangote's refinery was built, in part, on the promise that a single domestic source of supply would stabilise what Nigerians pay for fuel. Two price moves in nine days produced a 67 naira gap between Lagos and Borno at the pump. The reader in Lagos and the reader in Maiduguri are both filling up with product from the same refinery, moved through very different supply chains by the time it reaches them. They are not paying the same country's price to do it.