Nigeria, June 25 -- Conoil Plc started the year on unsteady feet with a colossal 93 percent fall in pre-tax profit in the first quarter of 2025 to N372 million.

That is its lowest in three years since 2021. For the first time in previous quarters, when foreign exchange losses or increasing cost of doing business could have been the cause of such a decline, here, the pain is because of speculative finance costs fueled by aggressive borrowing.

Conoil's short-term borrowings went up by a massive 48 percent during January and March 2025, primarily through a 29.75 percent bank overdraft. This is a huge jump in the cost of borrowings that nearly doubled the company's finance charges within a quarter, tightening its profitability despite compa...