Edo State Governor Monday Okpebholo’s comparison of petrol prices in Nigeria and Britain has been challenged by an analysis showing that the crucial difference is not the pump price but the income required to afford it.
The analysis, published by Profiles International Human Rights Advocate (PIHRA) and authored by investigative journalist and policy analyst Daniel Nduka Okonkwo, argued that comparing petrol prices across countries without comparing workers’ earnings gives a misleading picture of affordability.
Okpebholo had, on Thursday, September 24, said that Nigerians were “doing very well” after checking petrol prices during a recent visit to London. According to the governor, petrol in Britain translated to more than N3,000 per litre, compared with about N1,400 in Nigeria, which he cited while praising President Bola Tinubu’s economic management.
Okonkwo, however, said the comparison stops at nominal prices and fails to answer the more important economic question: how much of a worker’s labour is required to buy a litre of petrol.
According to the analysis, Britain’s National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and above stood at £12.71 per hour from April 2026. Using an exchange rate of about N1,754 to the pound on September 25, the statutory hourly wage translates to roughly N22,300.
Nigeria’s N70,000 monthly national minimum wage, calculated over a standard 160-hour working month, translates to approximately N437.50 per hour. The analysis therefore puts the hourly earning power of a British minimum-wage worker at about 51 times that of a Nigerian worker on the statutory minimum wage when converted at the cited exchange rate.
The purchasing-power difference becomes clearer at the petrol pump. With petrol selling at about N1,385 to N1,430 per litre in Lagos and Abuja, the Nigerian worker earning N437.50 an hour would need roughly 3.2 to 3.4 hours of labour to earn enough to buy one litre.
By contrast, the analysis calculated that a British worker on the statutory minimum wage would require only about three and a half to four minutes of work to earn the equivalent of N1,385 to N1,430. Okonkwo said the illustration demonstrates why exchange-rate conversion alone cannot establish whether fuel is affordable.
The analysis also noted that a 50-litre tank at N1,430 per litre would cost N71,500, exceeding Nigeria’s N70,000 monthly minimum wage. At N1,500 per litre, the same tank would cost N75,000, meaning a worker on the statutory minimum wage would need more than an entire month’s gross earnings to purchase a full tank.
Okonkwo further argued that petrol has a wider economic impact in Nigeria because it is not merely a transport expense. With households and businesses frequently relying on generators amid unreliable electricity supply, higher petrol prices feed into transportation, production, distribution, business operations and ultimately the prices of goods and services.
He therefore maintained that a higher nominal petrol price in Britain does not establish that Nigerians are better off. Rather, he said, meaningful comparison requires consideration of wages, purchasing power and the proportion of income consumed by essential expenses.
The PIHRA analysis concluded that the central issue raised by Okpebholo’s comparison was therefore not the price of petrol in London, but the value of an hour of labour in Nigeria. It argued that measuring affordability through the share of income required to purchase fuel presents a substantially different picture from simply converting foreign pump prices into naira.
