For Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer and one of its most densely populated nations, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in early 2026 exposed fault lines that politicians and technocrats have long preferred to ignore. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most consequential waterways on earth. Roughly 21 kilometers wide at its narrowest point, it channels nearly 20% of the world’s oil trade, functioning as the jugular vein of the global hydrocarbon economy. When that artery constricted in March 2026, Brent crude prices surged past $114 per barrel, the highest since 2022 – in a matter of days.

Beyond crude oil, the closure disrupted the flow of petrochemicals and fertilizers, commodities for which the Gulf region is among the world’s foremost exporters. As UNCTAD observed, the disruption deepened global economic strain across trade, prices, and finance, threatening the food security of import-dependent nations from sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia. Nigeria was firmly in that cross-hair.

Why can’t Nigeria refine its own oil?

There is a bitter irony at the heart of Nigeria’s energy story. A nation that sits atop some of the world’s richest hydrocarbon deposits has, for decades, been unable to refine sufficient fuel for its own population. Nigerians have paid the price of this structural contradiction through repeated fuel scarcity, suffocating queues at filling stations, and an economy perpetually held hostage by the price of imported refined petroleum products. The Hormuz crisis just stripped away whatever thin insulation of normalcy had accumulated over the years.

The commissioning of the Dangote Refinery in 2024 was greeted with optimism. With an initial capacity of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) and an ambition to expand to 1.4 million bpd, it was positioned as the transformative answer to Nigeria’s chronic refining deficit and a statement of industrial sovereignty.

Yet the promise has been undermined by a fundamental contradiction: Nigeria’s oil, extracted from its own land, is systematically routed away from its own shores. International oil companies (IOCs) operating in the country have demonstrated a persistent preference for exporting crude to global spot markets rather than supplying domestic refineries. The result has been a structural........

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