How cement dealers frustrated plans to slash price to N3,500 — BUA Chairman

Abdulsamad Rabiu, Chairman of BUA Cement Plc, has revealed how his company’s plan to sell cement at ₦3,500 per bag last year was thwarted by cement dealers.

Speaking at the company’s 8th Annual General Meeting on Thursday, Rabiu explained that despite BUA Cement’s intention to lower prices, profiteering dealers significantly impacted the policy’s success.

Rabiu noted that dealers exploited the situation by not passing on the reduced prices to customers.

Instead, they sold the cement at inflated prices, sometimes as high as ₦7,000 or ₦8,000 per bag, despite BUA Cement’s sale price of ₦3,500.

He said, “A lot of the dealers took advantage of that policy. Rather than pass the low prices to the customers, they were selling at even double the price we sold to them.”

He added that this manipulation led to BUA Cement having sold over a million tons at the reduced price before realising the dealers’ actions.

The policy was further unsustainable due to external factors such as the devaluation of the Naira and the removal of the fuel subsidy.

Rabiu explained, “Because of the issues that Nigeria faced at the time about the devaluation of the Naira last year and the removal of fuel subsidy, we could not continue that policy.

We wanted that price to stay at that level, but dealers refused. So, we could not sustain that simply because we did not want to be in a situation where we are subsidising dealers.”

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