Expectations that the lingering scarcity of petroleum products across the country, especially Premium Motor Spirit PMS, also called petrol would ease off in few weeks may have been dashed, as the Independent Petroleum Marketers’ Association of Nigeria IPMAN has warned that Nigerians are in for a worse scarcity in history.
Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari, who doubles as Minister of Petroleum Resources had last week set up a committee under his chairmanship and co-chaired by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Temipre Sylver to find ways to address the scarcity with the attendant long queues at petrol stations, which had persisted since October last year.
Also recall that the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakub had while meeting with officials of transport unions including National Association of Road Transport Owners NARTO, National Union of Road Transport Workers NURTW, among others in Abuja yesterday, expressed fears that the scarcity of the products might negatively affect the conduct of the 2023 general elections, which are expected to commence February 25 with the presidential election.
Speaking during a radio interview monitored in Lagos, Wednesday, zonal chairman of the South West of IPMAN, Dele Tajudeen, disclosed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited NNPCL has 29 depots in south west part of the country, none of which has a single litre of petrol because the NNPCL has since stopped importing the products.
According to him, since the NNPCL, which before now was the largest importer does not have products, the independent marketers have resorted to buying from private tank farm owners, whose prices are higher than the rate at which the NNPCL was selling to them.
He warned that Nigerians should not allow themselves to be deceived into believing that there are products somewhere, insisting that there is no product anywhere as against the claims by some government officials that the scarcity was caused by some logistic gaps in the distribution channels.
“I don’t know why the Federal Government has chosen at this time to be insensitive to the plight and suffering of Nigerians. I have said this before at different forums and I would say it again; there is no fuel from the NNPCL so we buy products from the private tank farm owners. If it is just logistics problem as some government officials are claiming, we will load products Saturdays and Sundays and within a short time, everything would ease out but this is not the case. There is just no product.
“Before now, we were buying from the tank farms at N300 per litre or a little less but when we went to load last week, we discovered that some new charges have been added, which might bring the price up to N350 per litre and we have not been able to generate the RRR in order to pay, so that is where we are as at now.
“But let me also tell you that we are not charity organisations so we are in business to make profit and so we will sell at the market-determined price because if the NNPCL sells to us at a lower rate, it can dictate to us how much we should sell”, the zonal chairman argued.
Most Nigerians have been lamenting the worsening challenges and difficulties associated with living in the country, especially less than one month to the presidential election characterised by long queues at filling stations to buy petrol, banks’ Automated Teller Machines ATMs struggling to collect the new naira notes under the currency swap policy and long queues at INEC offices and Local Government offices and election wards to collect their Permanent Voter’s Card PVC to enable them cast their votes.
