In Niamey, behind the closed doors of the Prime Minister’s office, the management of Niger’s oil crisis has descended into a financial battleground. Explosive disclosures from a secret meeting on 12 October 2026 have laid bare SONIDEP’s failures, the inflation of dubious penalties, and a high-stakes financial standoff with SORAZ.

A closed-door meeting that ended in fiasco

The meeting convened on Monday 12 October 2026 at the Primature, chaired directly by Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine. Officially, the agenda was to unblock the oil sector and secure the country’s fuel supply. In reality, the session collapsed into disarray.

To uncover what really happened, we spoke at length with a senior official directly involved in the case. Given the gravity of the facts and the pressure on sector players, this informant insisted on anonymity. Their account paints a picture of a system on its last legs, where financial interests have eclipsed public governance.

Eight meetings, no results: SORAZ pushes back

The first clash of the session centred on the committee’s own costs. According to our informant, the Zinder Refining Company (SORAZ) was formally ordered to pay 12 million FCFA in session allowances for that single day.

This time, the refinery’s management refused outright. And with good reason: “It was the ninth meeting of its kind, the third chaired directly by the head of government,” our anonymous source confides. “Each time, SORAZ has shelled out tens of millions to finance this committee’s lifestyle, without any technical or financial solution ever being delivered. The company simply said stop to what now looks like a rent-seeking scheme.”

To guarantee the survival of this lucrative arrangement, the committee allegedly inserted a clause into its own rules allowing it to arbitrarily extend its mandate beyond twelve months, citing persistent instability in the sector.

The 418 billion FCFA trail: from SONIDEP to the presidential palace

At the heart of the dispute between the state, the Nigerien Petroleum Products Company (SONIDEP), and SORAZ lies a colossal debt: 418 billion FCFA owed by SONIDEP to the refinery.

During the 12 October committee, state representatives were unable to produce a contradictory or certified accounting statement. “They came empty-handed, citing press clippings instead of providing certified balance sheets,” our witness says indignantly.

But where did the money go? Our informant sheds light on the internal breakdown of this financial hole:

• 12% covers cross-debts with the electricity company NIGELEC;
• 18% corresponds to authorised withdrawals for the armed forces;
• 70% represents direct outflows from SONIDEP, part of which was channelled in cash to the presidential palace.

Faced with the impossibility of justifying this massive evaporation of liquidity, a strategy to erase the debt was allegedly devised.

The penalty factory: a financial trap for SORAZ

To write off the 418 billion FCFA owed to SORAZ, the committee reportedly set about inventing and artificially inflating penalties imposed on the refinery.

Our source explains the mechanism: over the course of the meetings, the penalties demanded from SORAZ jumped from 6 billion to 76 billion FCFA. But the plan goes much further. The mechanism for clearing cross-debts between the state, SONIDEP, NIGELEC, SORAZ, and the Chinese partner CNPC would serve as a pretext to load SORAZ with record new penalties, estimated at between 200 and 400 billion FCFA.

“The goal is crystal clear,” our anonymous informant summarises: “to fabricate fictitious debts on SORAZ’s books to offset the 418 billion FCFA claim that SONIDEP cannot repay.”

Technical sabotage and forced production cuts

The investigation also reveals that financial tensions have a direct impact on the industrial plant and safety at the Zinder site. While official rhetoric promised production would climb back to 20,000 barrels per day, actual output has collapsed to around 12,000 barrels.

According to our source, this decline is the result of direct manipulation suffered by the refinery: “Algerian operatives, acting on direct instructions from Nigerien authorities, physically intervened on SORAZ’s valves.”

This manoeuvre allegedly caused significant overheating in the facilities, endangering equipment and personnel. In this climate of disorganisation, the refinery’s major maintenance operation, initially scheduled for October, was urgently postponed to next May.

The shortage paradox: the mystery of the missing 1,000 barrels

On the domestic market, the picture is grim for the population: fuel is in desperately short supply. Yet the figures revealed by our informant point to a glaring inconsistency.

With production even reduced to 12,000 barrels per day and national consumption estimated at 11,000 barrels per day, the Nigerien market should theoretically run a surplus of 1,000 barrels daily.

Where does this surplus go? Failures in tracking volumes leaving Zinder, combined with the grey areas surrounding flows through the Algerian corridor and the agreement with the Ader refinery, fuel uncertainty about the existence of parallel networks.

Contacted for comment on these accusations and our informant’s statements, neither the Primature nor SONIDEP’s management wished to respond. One thing is certain: behind the fuel pump crisis, the entire governance of Niger’s oil windfall is now trapped in its own contradictions.

By Yacouba Ouédraogo — Journalist