Even as the scarcity of kerosene continues to bite harder in the country, dealers of the commodity under the aegis of Surface Tanks Kerosene Dealers Association and Dealers (SUTAKEP) have continued to lobby the National Assembly in order to secure total rights in the lifting and circulation of kerosene in Nigeria.
Even as the scarcity of kerosene continues to bite harder in the country, dealers of the commodity under the aegis of Surface Tanks Kerosene Dealers Association and Dealers (SUTAKEP) have continued to lobby the National Assembly in order to secure total rights in the lifting and circulation of kerosene in Nigeria.
Speaking with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week, the Alimosho unit chairman and Lagos State coordinator of the group; Comrade Joseph Oluwole Ojo said that the association deserves the right to be issued with the sole ticket of lifting and distributing kerosene in Nigeria because the body has its members in all the states of the country.
Comrade Ojo said that unless the government issues SUKATEP the lifting right, the price of kerosene will continue to rise in Nigeria. He alleged that it is the people that government has issued with the tickets that are manipulating the prices of the commodity.
“We are appealing to the government to try as much as possible to give us our ticket and lifting right because we are the people that deal with consumers from the grassroots, it is the surface tanks association that gets to all the villages and the entire masses, we move from the urban centers to the rural areas” he argued.
In pursuing for this, Comrade Ojo told Shippng Position Daily that his association has taken its request to the Senate and the House of Representatives, according to him, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Deziane Madueke is also aware of the request. “Our file is in front of her, unless she gives us a listening ear, it is only then that the masses can gain from kerosene and stop groaning”
Comrade Ojo also said that the price of the commodity remains worrying, saying that as a domestic product it should not cost more that N51 per litre from the tank farms, but regrettably the product is being bought for N109 from the tank farms.
“The subsidy protest and all the noise we had in January did not seem to have anything from kerosene, it is a domestic product yet we are buying it for about N109 from the depot and which is not supposed to be more than N51, if you buy it for this high amount, on getting back to the masses, it cannot be less that 120 naira per litre”, he stressed.
Continuing he said, “the product is available and being refined in Nigeria, it is not an imported product, kerosene is being refined in Nigeria, something that we are refining here, government is just deceiving us that they want to construct refineries and yet nothing is being done”.
He however called for the speedy implementation of the report of the Farouk Lawal committee on subsidy probe, saying that unless a disciplinary action is taken against the people that are indicted, all the efforts of interest groups will result to mere noise making.
“If the people at the helm of affairs cannot deal with the cabals controlling the sector, there is nothing that we can do” he said.
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