Still On FCCPC And The Cement Monsters …By Bolanle BOLAWOLE
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Last week we commented on the scandalously high price of cement in the country vis-a-vis our neighbouring countries which import the commodity from Nigeria but where, incredulously, it is cheaper! What kind of voodoo economics accounts for this? The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), a Federal Government agency charged with protecting consumers against sharp business practices, raised an alarm after its initial investigation established what lawyers call a prima facie case against cement producers in Nigeria. A country which produces far more cement than it needs – that is, where supply far outstrips demand – pays more for the commodity than its neighbours which import the same commodity from our shores! And the FCCPC said it has ordered a full-blown investigation, inviting cement producers to explain why this should be so.
Expectedly, readers’ response to last week’s “Cement’s astronomical price: Can FCCPC tame the monsters” was emotive. Many respondents placed the blame for what they called a “rip-off” at the doormouth of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu; any buck-passing, they argued, stops at his desk. Others insist that the government’s economic policies make the cost of doing business in the country expensive.
Business-friendly or friend of business?
While identifying with the thrust of our argument here last week, one responder, Engr. Ademola Rabiu, went farther to make a distinction between “business-friendly” and “a friend of business”, insisting that the Tinubu administration has allowed businesses in general – and not only the cement monsters – to run rampage on hapless citizens. Making a specific example of the banking industry, he argues that “business-friendly is not the same as a friend of business.” He enjoined the president to “support big business but protect the masses.” Let’s hear him out!
“When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu stood before dignitaries in Kigali and declared that his administration would support big businesses — naming the Dangotes and the BUAs of our economy as beneficiaries of presidential goodwill — he said something that was, in itself, neither wrong nor alarming. A state that does not create the conditions for enterprise to flourish is a state that will produce neither wealth nor jobs. We do not quarrel with the principle. We quarrel loudly, patriotically, and urgently on behalf of the Nigerian masses with what was left unsaid.
“There is a sharp, morally-loaded, and constitutionally-significant distinction between a government that is “business-friendly” and a government that is “a friend of businesses.” The first is a developmental posture. The latter is a conflict of interest dressed in economic language. A business-friendly state builds infrastructure, enforces contracts, reduces bureaucratic friction, and creates the regulatory predictability that allows capital to plan and invest. A friend of businesses, by contrast, provides cover. It looks away when monopoly pricing bleeds the consumer. It underfunds the institutions meant to police corporate excesses. It mistakes the prosperity of preferential shareholders for the prosperity of citizens. Nigeria, at this juncture of its history, can afford one. It cannot survive the other.
“We call on our President, therefore, not to abandon the big businesses of our economy — but to govern them… In the last financial year, Nigeria’s big commercial banks posted profits that crossed the one trillion Naira threshold. These are not modest surpluses earned in a season of shared national prosperity. These are extractions from a citizenry already bleeding under inflation and the removal of subsidy supports that once cushioned the worst effects of a deeply unequal economic structure. The same banks that posted these staggering figures maintained maintenance charges, SMS alert fees, card renewal levies, and transfer commissions that, in aggregate, represent a systematic taxation of the poor by the private sector — a taxation that answers to no parliament, no budget, no democratic mandate.
“Cement, similarly, tells a story of corporate windfall and consumer punishment coexisting without shame. The price of a bag of cement in Nigeria today places construction — of homes, of schools, of clinics — beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians. Yet, the companies that produce it report profits that any global investor would envy. The mathematics here is not complicated: if profit is extraordinary and the product is essential, then the ordinary Nigerian is being made to subsidize the extraordinary comfort of shareholders. This is not the logic of a free market. It is the logic of a rigged market — and it is the duty of the State to correct it.”
Are Banks ripping off customers?
The responder then mentioned the particular case of a bank (name withheld), which he said “deserves particular and urgent attention, for it illuminates a form of opacity that ought to alarm every serious regulator in Abuja.” He said a review of the financial accounts of the bank in question revealed “a staggering ₦183 billion on advertising and related expenditure in 2025 alone — a jaw-dropping 141% increase from the ₦75 billion recorded in 2024. Let that figure breathe for a moment: ₦183 billion in a single year in advertising from one financial institution! As if this is not alarming enough, separate reports have confirmed that billions more were expended on lavish send-forth parties and farewell ceremonies for outgoing executives — at a time when the same institution was imposing charges on customers for the most basic of banking transactions.
“No serious analyst, no credible forensic accountant, and no regulator worthy of the title should receive these figures with equanimity. At what point does an advertising budget of this scale cease to be a marketing expense and become a mechanism for diffusing costs that, on honest accounting, would expose governance failure, executive excesses, or structural inefficiency? At what point do inflated operational expenditures — whether in marketing, consultancy, lavish executive celebrations, or management fees — become instruments by which grand corporate corruption and rank inefficiency are laundered into the books and passed, silently and mercilessly, onto the Nigerian consumer as higher charges and steeper fees.
“These are not rhetorical questions. They are questions the CBN, FCCPC, and the Financial Reporting Council must be mandated — with political force from the very top — to ask, and to answer publicly. The failure of regulatory oversight on corporate finances is not a technical lacuna. It is a political choice. And every political choice has a beneficiary. When consumers pay the price for inefficiency that regulators refuse to investigate, the beneficiary is not the Nigerian people.
“Nigeria is not without the institutional architecture of consumer protection. The FCCPC exists. The Consumer Protection Council that preceded it existed. Price monitoring agencies have been created, dissolved, recreated, and defunded in cyclical patterns that suggest they were never truly meant to function. The Central Bank has consumer protection directives that banks honour in the breach as often as in the observance. What Nigeria lacks is not laws. What it lacks is leadership and political will to enforce laws — and the fiscal commitment to resource the enforcers.
Recommendations
“We, therefore, call on this administration to take the following concrete steps: First, significantly strengthen the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission — in courageous and people-centred leadership, in budgeting, in independence, in prosecutorial mandate, and in its capacity to impose penalties that actually deter, rather than fines that corporate legal teams factor in as routine costs of doing business.
“Second, introduce a ‘windfall profit tax’ on corporations operating in essential sectors — banking, cement, telecommunications, and energy — whose profits exceed a defined threshold above historical averages. This is not punitive. It is precedented: the UK, the EU, and several African states have deployed windfall levies in precisely this manner. The revenues generated can be channelled into price stabilisation funds, infrastructure investment, or targeted welfare transfers. The signal sent to the market will be equally valuable: that super-normal profit extracted from an impoverished citizenry is not a civic good, and the State reserves the right to recall a portion of it for the commonwealth.
“Third, mandate transparent, publicly accessible, auditor-verified reporting on the major expenditure lines of systemically important financial institutions and dominant market players in essential sectors… No financial institution should be able to record a 141% year-on-year surge in a single expenditure line without triggering an automatic, mandatory regulatory inquiry.
“Fourth, the National Assembly should establish a Standing Committee on Corporate Welfare and Consumer Dignity, tasked specifically with the annual review of profit declarations, pricing trends, and consumer complaint data in critical sectors. Accountability requires an institutional address.
“We appeal, in the same breath as we charge, to the conscience of Nigeria’s business leaders. The corporate titans that operate in and from the Nigerian economy did not build their wealth in a vacuum. They built it on the roads — however broken — that moved their goods. On the courts — however slow — that enforced their contracts. On the labour — however underpaid — of Nigerian workers. On the patronage — however constrained — of Nigerian consumers. The social contract runs in both directions.
“To the captains of Nigerian industry, we say: you do not have to wait for the State to compel you to be just. A portion of the extraordinary profit voluntarily translated into lower prices, worker-welfare, community-investment, and supply-chain deepening is not charity. It is strategic patriotism. It is Corporate Social Investments. It is the recognition that your long-term market — and the political stability that keeps your factories running and your capital secure — depends on the survival and dignity of the Nigerian masses. The businesses that will still be standing in 50 years are the ones that understand this!”
I do agree! Let President Tinubu – and the FCCPC – act!
FEEDBACK
We have a situation where a few individuals produce cement and fix the price. Many other cement companies were purposely killed and sent out of the market; the same scenario is gradually playing out in the refinery business! – Austeen Igharoro.
Succour might not come the way of suffering Nigerians despite FCCPC investigations. The retail price of cement will continue to climb up for as long as the enabling environment here is not friendly to the manufacturing companies, compared to what operates in other Africa countries. Industries are driven by the affordable cost of energy, foreign exchange rates, and other logistics. No country that wants to develop leaves individuals and companies to provide their own energy or pay so much for it as is the case here. Developed countries subsidize energy. If the cost of energy and foreign exchange drop drastically today, the cost of goods and services will also drop drastically – and cement will not be an exemption. So, the problem is not caused by the manufacturing companies or any failure on the part of the FCCPC. – Engr. James O. Eclarke.
It is absolutely unacceptable for cement companies to increase prices on whims. I think it is about time we go back to local building materials. A professor-friend of mine built two of his three houses with mud bricks at Ilesha and Ile-Ife. So, anyone building a bungalow need not use cement blocks. My house was built with red bricks. Other alternatives include the Hydra form building system innovation from South Africa, which can be used to build any design with the cost reduced by at least 50%. – Tunji Bakare.
Thanks for the write-up on the rising cost of cement, and the prevalent monopoly of a few in the commanding heights of the economy, that has only brought misery upon Nigerians. There is the need to pile pressure on the FCCCP to make its investigative report on the cement issue public. This also includes its report on an earlier intervention on increase in the cost of fuel. – Chris Uyot.
Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Westerner newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in the New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
