The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has alleged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) policy of unilaterally importing fuel was the cause of the fresh rounds of scarcity across the country.
The Union called on NNPC to decentralize the importation of fuel by factoring in the independent marketers, saying that currently, the demand for fuel is higher than the supply.
However, some marketers have alleged that the problems encountered at the depots, especially multiple collection of levies and demand for bribes were part of the reasons some of the filling stations were insisting on selling above regulated price of N86 or N86.50 per litre of petrol.
Lagos Zonal Coordinator of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of NUPENG, Comrade Lawal Abidoye told Shipping Position Daily that there is need for independent marketers to be given a free hand to import.
He observed that Nigeria, on the average consumes not less than 40million litres of fuel daily and that what is being imported by NNPC could not serve the whole country.
“What could have solved the problem is if the refineries are in a working condition, there is no amount of product imported that would serve Nigerians effectively, on daily basis Nigeria consumes not less than 40million litres across the country, this is just averagely, so if somebody is importing 200million litres today, divide it by 40million, how long will it serve us?”
“The independent marketers should be allowed free hand, their involvement have been there before now, but because of different allegations by the government, everything was brought under NNPC” Comrade Lawal stated.
Continuing, he urged government to renew the importing license and supervise the importation of fuel by marketers. He argued that this should be worked out, rather than putting all our eggs in one basket.
Shipping Position Daily findings revealed that out of over 30 depots in Lagos, less than nine had stock, and out of 25 depot owned by independent oil marketers, only four had products. These four are; Folawiyo, Capital Oil, NIPCO, ASCON. Meanwhile the limited stock of petrol which they have was exhausted last week.
Also, because demand exceeds supply, tanker drivers at depots bribed their way through to get PMS, this excludes some other levies and fees paid by the tanker drivers before they leave depot with fuel.
Responding to the allegations however, Comrade Lawal told our correspondent that, “let the marketers tell you the category of union that collects money, their claim is wrong, we don’t collect any levy from marketers, we collect from our own members that drive trucks, we don’t collect from marketers, we are not selling product to them” he said.
Meanwhile, further investigations have shown that even most of the depots being used by NNPC for storage purposes were directed not to load above 50 trucks daily, thus compounding the shortage situation. Some depot operators cashed-in to sell at N105/litre ex-depot, against government’s prescribed N77 per litre.
According to one of the depot operators, who preferred anonymity: “No matter the quantity of product NNPC gives us, since they have said not more than 50 trucks per day, we cannot go beyond that.
“Our depot is now like a ghost yard, because we’ve finished with the 50, but we still have stock, and there is a long queue of trucks waiting to load outside.”
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