MARKETERS TO FG : “We can no longer sell petrol at N145/Litre”

The Chairman of Depot and Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPMAN), Mr. Dapo Abiodun,  yesterday, told the Federal Government that petroleum marketers  could no longer sell petrol at N145 per litre.

Abiodun stated this in Abuja at a stakeholders’ meeting convened by the Federal Government to find a lasting solution to the recurrent and persistent fuel crisis. The meeting was chaired by the Chief of Staff to the President, Mr. Abba Kyari.

The DAPMAN boss in defending marketers’ insistence that no marketer during the December fuel scarcity hoarded petroleum product.

He explained that the rise in crude oil prices as a result of Hurricane Katrina in the US led to a sharp increase in the landing cost of petrol, a situation that resulted into the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) being the sole importer of petrol.

He disclosed that since the suspension of the payment of subsidy by the Federal Government last year, importing fuel at the landing cost of N145 per litre by marketers was no longer practicable.

 “Today’s meeting was called at the instance of Kyari, and it was to find out exactly what happened, where we had  problems in December with regards to supply shortfall and what could be done going forward to avert such crisis.

A lot of issues were raised and a committee was constituted that would be meeting today under the Chairmanship of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr.Ibe Kachikwu, to further go into the nitty gritty and to ensure that these problems do not recur again,’’ he said

The committee was set up at the end of the three and half hours meeting headed by Kyari, which had in attendance all stakeholders in the oil sector on the orders of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Other members of the committee are the NNPC Group Managing Director,  Maikanti Baru, most parastatals under the ministry, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria(IPMAN), Depot and Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPMAN),  Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN), labour unions (NLC and TUC), among others.

The meeting which held at the State House Conference Centre (Old Banquet Hall), also had in attendance the DG SSS, Comptroller of Nigeria Immigration Service and representatives of other paramilitary services.

According to Kachikwu, the meeting was not fault finding but to find a lasting solution to the problems and ensure it does not occur again as directed by President Buhari.

“The whole idea was to do a centric analysis  of what really went wrong. Like you know for over two years,  we have been out of this problem; it’s been working well; NNPC has been managing it properly and suddenly there was this gap. So they wanted us to put heads together to find out what went wrong.”