The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has entered the Federal High Court in Lagos to oppose Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s lawsuit seeking to cancel fuel import licences issued to rival marketers. NNPC’s central argument is that allowing one refinery to control access to Nigeria’s fuel market would threaten supply security, destabilise pump prices, and concentrate dangerous levels of market power in private hands.
That argument has legal and economic merit. It also comes from an institution that has spent over $2.4 billion rehabilitating two refineries in Port Harcourt and Warri that have produced no meaningful output.
The Port Harcourt and Warri facilities were declared mechanically complete in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Both operated briefly after a relaunch in late 2024 before shutting down again. Port Harcourt alone accumulated over N4.22 trillion in total debt. Utilisation, when the plants were running at all, hovered between 50 and 55 per cent. NNPC has since signed a memorandum of understanding with two Chinese firms to revive the plants under a Technical Equity Partnership, the latest in a series of rehabilitation commitments attached to the same assets over many years.
Against that backdrop, Dangote’s refinery is producing at 650,000 barrels per day, above its installed capacity, and supplied roughly 80 per cent of Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption in April 2026. The refinery is also preparing for a public listing in September, with pre-IPO private placement requests already approaching $2 billion and analyst valuations ranging between $40 billion and $50 billion.
The lawsuit itself is the second of its kind. Dangote filed a similar case in 2024 before withdrawing it following federal government intervention. The refiling suggests whatever arrangement was reached then has since broken down. The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, which issued import licences to six companies covering 720,000 metric tonnes of petrol, has applied to join the proceedings. The attorney-general and several independent marketers are also named in the case.
NNPC’s court filing argues that the Petroleum Industry Act permits import licences for companies with domestic refining capacity or proven trading track records, and that regulators retain discretion over import management under Nigeria’s backwards-integration policy. It also contends that Dangote has not provided verifiable evidence that the refinery can meet Nigeria’s total fuel demand or guarantee uninterrupted nationwide supply without competition.
That last point is substantive regardless of who is making it. A single point of failure in any critical supply chain carries real risk, and Nigeria’s fuel market has experienced enough disruption over the years to take supply security arguments seriously.
What the court must weigh is whether the import licences were issued lawfully under existing regulation, and whether Dangote’s challenge to them has legal standing. The broader question of market structure, how much domestic refining capacity is enough before imports become unnecessary, and who gets to make that determination, sits underneath the legal dispute and will not be fully resolved by any single ruling.
A hearing is scheduled for the coming weeks. The outcome will matter not just for the two parties directly involved but for every investor trying to assess the regulatory environment around Nigeria’s downstream sector ahead of what would be one of the continent’s largest energy listings.
