Oil marketers have said that it is difficult to enforce the approved N195/litre price on all filling stations.
This was after the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria disclosed on Wednesday that Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had promised that it had reserved about 140 million litres of petrol for its association members to address fuel scarcity.
The Punch reported that oil marketers have not yet stabilised which is the reason for the ongoing queues in many parts of Nigeria. Although, it has minimised in Nigeria.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, has said that queues for fuel would clear in one week.
Reacting to this, the marketers were optimistic but also reinstated that it may be impossible for filling stations to adopt the government-approved price of N195/litre.
The Secretary, IPMAN Abuja-Suleja, Mohammed Shuaibu, Commented on the statement made by Kyari, “We cannot just conclude now that the problem is over, but I know that we have to give it a week or there about, to see how the situation will be, before concluding.
He also said that the product is not yet produced abundantly in most parts of Nigeria.
In his words, “The NNPC boss is an authority and we are not going to dispute that, but we hope so, because it is our prayer that all these problems are resolved. I am not going to dispute his position, but as I speak with you, our members across the country are still not getting the product the way they should.
“And there are those who bought products at higher rates. Government is now telling them to sell at the government approved rate and that there will be enforcement, which, of course, is going to be difficult to implement. It is a challenge as far as we are concerned.”
Shuaibu explained that because Abuja was the capital city and had the seat of government, there were fewer queues there than in other states. He also added that the government had issued a directive to increase PMS supply to Abuja.
“It is an embarrassment to the government for the queues to continue in Abuja. So it gave marching orders to douse the tension in Abuja. But most people are going to ask about why we still have queues and lack of products in Lagos, contrary to what we see in Abuja,” he added.
Shuaibu also said that scarcity of naira is also affecting the market as people are not getting cash.
In his words, I’ll say that I believe that this naira scarcity could also be a factor, because people hardly get money to go to the market and people are really going through hell right now.
“The cash crunch is affecting both the oil marketer and the customers of our products. There is no cash, you can’t travel to perfect some transactions, even the Internet services are not functioning as expected. You encounter difficulties when trying to make transfers.”
