We can’t sell petrol at N145 per litre, marketers tell FG

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.”