Too much cement
Nigeria can produce more than twice the cement it uses, and ships the surplus out through Apapa. In the same year, the price of a bag rose by more than half.
It costs what it costs.
If you have bought cement in Nigeria this year, you already know the shape of this story. A 50kg bag went for — a rise of more than half, inside eight months, on the single most important input in Nigerian construction.
That is the part everyone experienced. What follows is the part almost nobody has looked at, and it is published on a government website.
It is made here, by very few people.
Cement is not complicated to place. You need limestone, a great deal of energy, and a kiln near both. Nigeria has all three, which is why the country stopped importing it.
It is also a market with very few sellers. — a structure that is not unusual for cement anywhere in the world, because the plants are enormous and the freight is expensive. It does mean that when prices move, they move together.
The country is standing on the raw material.
This is why the question gets asked at all. Cement begins as limestone, and Nigeria has a great deal of limestone. Its neighbours largely do not.
The Commission's comparison is blunt: . A country with no limestone, buying its cement from somewhere else, selling it for less than the country that digs it out of the ground.
That comparison was the spine of the first cut of our film, and it does not survive contact with the wider evidence. .
So the honest version is narrower: cement is cheaper in Lomé and dearer in northern Togo. A single price point across a border is not a finding. We have taken it out of the front of this story and we are telling you that we did.
There is more of it than the country can use.
Here is the thing that should not happen. Nigeria can make . The surplus is exported — a great deal of it through Apapa, a few kilometres from where most of it is bought.
In a market with that much spare capacity, economics expects prices to fall. Instead .
That sentence is the entire investigation. Not that cement is expensive — that it is expensive while sitting on a mountain of unsold capacity.
The industry points to . None of that is invented. Nigerian manufacturers genuinely do pay more for power and finance than most of their competitors, and a naira that has fallen makes every imported spare part dearer.
— and they are right that a bare price comparison ignores all of it.
The Commission has not dismissed those explanations. It has said it will test them against the records. That is a different and more interesting thing than deciding in advance.
Who is asking, and what they have not said.
The Commission has , requiring pricing methodologies, production and capacity figures, export records and commercial relationships. .
And in the middle of the release, in a single sentence, is the thing nobody picked up.
Every major cement manufacturer in Nigeria handed the regulator its records. Except one. The Commission says so in public, and does not say which.
We are not going to guess which company that is, and we would ask you not to either. The sentence is remarkable enough standing still: a federal regulator, in a published statement, noting that one of the firms it is examining would not open its books.
It appears in the same release that produced and a week of coverage. Nobody quoted it.
The Commission has a duty to look beyond assumptions and establish the facts.
This is an open investigation. The FCCPC has not found price manipulation, and has not said that it has. It has found grounds to keep looking, which is a lower bar and a fairer one.
is the standard the Commission set itself. It is also the one we are holding ourselves to here.
Nigeria has too much cement. So why is it so expensive?
Sixty seconds. Behind the Headline, the second film in the series.
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Where all of this came from
Every claim in the piece, with its source and its status. Nothing hidden in a footnote, including the things we haven't nailed down yet.
A 50kg bag sold for between ₦9,300 and ₦9,700 in January 2026, between ₦10,500 and ₦13,000 by mid-year, and between ₦13,000 and ₦15,000 in some parts of the country by July.
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
"Publicly available estimates indicate that three major undertakings account for more than 90 percent of installed production capacity in the country."
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
"In Togo, a bag sells for $6.75 (N9,180). Significantly, Togo does not have limestone deposit." Naira figures are the Commission's own, converted from US dollars at approximately ₦1,360 to the dollar.
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
Published 24 August: a 50kg bag at about CFA 4,550 (≈₦10,844) in Lomé, but ₦15,492 in Kara and ₦17,160 in Dapaong — both above Nigeria's prevailing range of about ₦11,000 to ₦13,000.
https://www.legit.ng/business-economy/industry/1726878-new-cement-prices-emerge-nigeria-west-africa-developers-warn-housing-crisis/ ↗
"Nigeria has installed cement production capacity of more than 60 to 65 million metric tonnes annually, while estimated domestic consumption is approximately 25 to 30 million metric tonnes. Nigeria is also a net exporter of cement to neighbouring markets."
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
"Of particular concern to the Commission is that this level of production capacity has not resulted in the downward pressure on domestic prices that might ordinarily be expected in a competitive market with substantial excess capacity."
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
Industry participants identified energy costs, depreciation of the naira and its effect on imported machinery and spare parts, and transportation and logistics costs. "The Commission is testing these explanations against verified information on costs, production, pricing and market conditions."
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
The interim chairman of the Pan-African Manufacturers Association and the director-general of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise have both argued that taxes, levies, logistics, transport, energy and financing costs must be part of any comparison of cement prices between countries.
https://www.legit.ng/business-economy/industry/1726878-new-cement-prices-emerge-nigeria-west-africa-developers-warn-housing-crisis/ ↗
Notices of Commencement of Investigation and Summons to Produce were issued to key players, requiring records on pricing methodologies, production and capacity utilisation, exports and commercial relationships.
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
Dangote Cement Plc, BUA Cement Plc and BHM Nigeria Plc, formerly Lafarge Africa, declined to comment on the Commission's preliminary findings.
https://www.legit.ng/business-economy/industry/1726878-new-cement-prices-emerge-nigeria-west-africa-developers-warn-housing-crisis/ ↗
"Nigeria's cement costs outpace Kenya, Tanzania despite excess capacity — FCCPC", published 18 August 2026.
"When concerns persist about how such an important market is functioning, the Commission has a duty to look beyond assumptions and establish the facts."
https://fccpc.gov.ng/cement-fccpc-establishes-possible-price-manipulation/ ↗
Reporting
Sponge Media
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Dayo Elegbe
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Corrections and changes
- 28 Aug 2026 — First published.
- 28 Aug 2026 — An earlier cut of the film paraphrased the Commission's preliminary finding inside quotation marks. The wording used on this page is the Commission's own.