DOES President Bola Tinubu know that Alhaji Aliko Dangote says the cement he exports from Nigeria is cheaper than the cement he sells to Nigerians at home? If he does, has anyone in his government satisfactorily explained to him why? We, the people, demand an explanation.
These questions have become necessary following disturbing findings by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). After a three-month cross-border investigation, the Commission says its preliminary findings suggest possible manipulation of cement prices in Nigeria. It compared Nigeria with Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria, examining limestone availability, population, production capacity, consumption and retail prices. This deserves urgent attention. Readers will therefore permit this necessary digression from the electricity-sector series we began last week.
Our advantage begins beneath our feet
Limestone is not a scarce mineral in Nigeria. Commercial deposits occur across the country’s sedimentary basins, including the Benue Trough, Dahomey Basin and Sokoto Basin, supporting major cement-producing centres from Ogun and Cross River to Benue, Gombe and Sokoto states. The Nigerian Geological Survey Agency estimates the country’s limestone resources at about 10.6 billion tonnes, including 568 million tonnes of proven reserves.
Nigeria therefore possesses enormous domestic reserves of the principal raw material for cement production. Our installed cement-production capacity exceeds 60 million metric tonnes annually, against estimated domestic consumption of approximately 25-30 million tonnes. Nigeria consequently possesses substantial excess installed capacity and is a net exporter of cement to other African countries. Ordinarily, abundant raw materials, substantial excess production capacity and competition among producers should exert downward pressure on prices. Instead, the opposite appears to be happening.
Will somebody explain the price disparities?
According to the FCCPC, a 50kg bag of cement selling for between ?9,300 and ?9,700 in January 2026 had risen to ?10,500-?13,000 by mid-year and ?13,000-?15,000 in some locations by July.Now consider what consumers elsewhere in Africa are paying. Among the comparative prices published by the FCCPC, a bag sells for approximately ?7,344 in Kenya, ?6,528 in Tanzania and ?9,180 in Togo. How does this make economic sense, especially when Nigeria itself is a net exporter of cement?
The FCCPC is therefore right to investigate whether these prices result entirely from legitimate production costs or whether coordinated behaviour, abuse of market power, restriction of domestic supply or anti-competitive distribution practices are involved. Three major producers reportedly account for more than 90 percent of Nigeria’s installed cement-production capacity. Such concentration does not establish collusion, but it makes vigorous competition regulation indispensable.
Dangote’s tax explanation
Alhaji Aliko Dangote has provided an explanation that President Tinubu’s government should take seriously. In December 2025, during an interview with Business Insider Africa, Dangote argued that cement exported from Nigeria could be sold more cheaply because exports escape some domestic taxes and levies. He specifically mentioned 30 percent company income tax, two percent education levy, one percent health levy, 7.5 percent VAT and 10 percent withholding tax, arguing that avoiding these burdens enables exported Nigerian cement to compete with products from Turkey, Russia and China.
Dangote’s argument deserves interrogation.
Nigeria implemented major tax reforms from January 2026. The reforms were advertised as simplifying taxation, eliminating multiplicity, improving the business environment and reducing distortions. Some of the taxes and levies Dangote identified in December 2025 have since been altered or consolidated. Moreover, company income tax is imposed on taxable profits, VAT operates differently from income tax, and withholding tax is principally a tax-collection mechanism. They cannot simply be added together as though every percentage represents an additional tax directly imposed on the production cost of each bag of cement.
Questions for Tinubu’s cabinet members
Is Dangote’s explanation still correct under the new tax regime? Mr Taiwo Oyedele, who led Tinubu’s tax-reform programme before becoming Finance Minister, should tell us. How much tax is actually embedded in a 50kg bag of cement? NRS Chairman Dr Zacch Adedeji should publish the effective tax burden per bag of cement at the ex-factory price.
Let us have the numbers. Which taxes and levies apply when cement is sold domestically? Which disappear when it is exported? How much do they add to the factory-gate price?
These questions extend beyond cement. If Nigerian manufacturers generate much of their own electricity, provide some of their own infrastructure and still carry a tax burden sufficiently heavy to make their products more expensive at home than abroad, something is fundamentally wrong with our industrial system.
This is why the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, must explain why decades of backward-integration policies have not produced the expected consumer dividend. Nigerians accepted years of protection for the cement industry on the promise that domestic capacity would eventually deliver self-sufficiency and competitive prices. Capacity came. Exports came. Why have lower prices not followed?
The Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, complained that high cement prices were putting pressure on federal infrastructure projects and encouraging contractors to demand contract variations. He said the Federal Government would begin engaging manufacturers from July 1. Did those engagements take place? What was the outcome? The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Engr Muttaqha Rabe Darma, should also explain how government intends to address Nigeria’s enormous housing deficit without addressing the cost of one of its most important building materials. These ministers cannot operate in silos while Nigerians bear the consequences. Mr President, coordinate your team and confront the cost of cement head-on.
FCCPC must finish what it started
The FCCPC must demonstrate that it is an economic regulator and not another Nigerian institution that announces investigations only for the matter to disappear when public attention moves elsewhere. Its investigation should establish the ex-factory price of cement, manufacturers’ production costs and margins, distributors’ and retailers’ margins, capacity utilisation, domestic dispatch volumes, export volumes, transportation costs and the actual tax burden embedded in domestic cement prices. The Commission says all the major manufacturers except one cooperated by making their records available. Who refused? The FCCPC should tell Nigerians and use its lawful powers to obtain the necessary information.
Most importantly, this investigation must distinguish between government-created costs and market-created costs.If taxes are the problem, Oyedele and Adedeji should fix them. If manufacturers are restricting domestic supply, coordinating prices or abusing market power, the FCCPC should establish the evidence and sanction them. If distributors are imposing excessive margins, expose them.
The President must show leadership in this
President Tinubu should take charge because cement is not a luxury product. It sits at the foundation of houses, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and factories. Its price eventually appears in rents, house prices, infrastructure contracts and government expenditure. This is therefore not merely a dispute about what Dangote Cement, BUA Cement, HBM Nigeria or their distributors charge for a bag of cement. It is a test of Nigeria’s taxation, industrial policy, competition regulation, infrastructure policy and housing strategy.
Oyedele should tell us whether Dangote’s tax explanation remains valid under the new tax regime. Adedeji should quantify the tax burden on a bag of cement. Umahi should tell us what became of government’s promised engagement with manufacturers. Darma should explain what expensive cement means for affordable housing. Oduwole should explain where the consumer dividend from decades of cement-industry protection has gone.
And the FCCPC must follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Nigeria has the limestone, the factories and excess installed capacity. Nigerians should notpay more for Nigerian cement than consumers in countries to which we export it.