Fresh indications have emerged as to why the petroleum tank farms located in Apapa Lagos, as well as the ports located in Tin Can Island and Apapa Ports are often crowded.
Investigations by Shipping Position Daily at the Ibafon and Ibru petroleum tank farms last week confirmed that not all persons loitering around the tank farms are petroleum marketers. Some of them are actually out as agents to portfolio marketers, looking for innocent business men to defraud.?
Fresh indications have emerged as to why the petroleum tank farms located in Apapa Lagos, as well as the ports located in Tin Can Island and Apapa Ports are often crowded.
Investigations by Shipping Position Daily at the Ibafon and Ibru petroleum tank farms last week confirmed that not all persons loitering around the tank farms are petroleum marketers. Some of them are actually out as agents to portfolio marketers, looking for innocent business men to defraud.?
A security operative at one of the tank farms; Ascon Oil, Mr. Lucky Nwokolo? confirmed to Shipping Position Daily last week that unlike the port system where all persons dealing with the Nigeria Customs Service are expected to carry a practicing license, to be an agent in the petroleum sector does not require any license.
Nwokolo said that many of them are marketers under the major marketers. According to him, the major marketers have enough money to buy product in large quantities, they now employ people to loiter around the tank farms and look for buyers.
According to the security operative, some of them hang around the tank farms and lobby for jobs ranging from haulage, logistics, buying and selling among others, while others do not really have product to market but are looking for people that will fall victim to their antics.
"They don't really need licenses to carry out any of these jobs, the industry is a platform for you to do so many businesses ranging from logistics, haulage, buying and selling and so on"
"Some of them are tanker drivers, some are equally marketers under the major marketers, the people that bring in the product, some of them have money to buy bulk litres and they market it themselves by engaging some of these people who are marketing staff to stay out here and get customers, at the end of the day they get paid"? he said.
Also sharing his views on the crowd at the depots, a marketer, Mr. Chris Iyasere noted that the crowd at the tank farms and the port systems is due to the high rate of unemployment in the country.
He argued that 80 percent of the crowd are graduates who are unemployed and they only come to the depot daily in other to beg and live off people?.
?"So many of them are marketers, if you look at the Nigerian economy, you will see that unemployment is pervading the entire nation, and if you look at most of these people that form crowd at the tank farms, I will tell you that 80 per cent of them are graduates of different disciplines"
"But because they are not employed, they want to engage themselves in doing marketing and making little difference from what they sell rather than staying idle"
"Some of them who believe in themselves are making sales as go-between to make sales and make a little difference"
"It is because there is no job anywhere, during my time in secondary school, I come to Lagos and do holiday jobs at Aswani and other textile industries, but today most of these textile industries are no longer there and unemployment has taken over full time" Iyasere stated.
On his part, a tanker driver and NUPENG union member at T-Time Tank Farm, Comrade Suleiman Oladokun reiterated that many of the crowd at the tank farms are not original business men.
He said although the union has its members at each depot wearing uniforms, many of the other people are suitcase marketers who are merely looking for who will fall prey to their antics as 'fuel marketers'.
Oladokun however blamed the situation on lack of jobs and employment opportunities in the country.
"If there are jobs, nobody will go into crimes, but it is expected that this crowd will be at any depot selling products, it is left to you to shine your eyes because? many of them are employed as drivers, conductors to learn driving, some are agents, while very few are marketers" he said
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