- Accuse top officials of feeding fat on 21 dysfunctional depots, ignoring solutions
As Nigerians battle severe hardship, owing to scarcity and increase in the price of Premium Motor Sprit (PMS), popularly called petrol, some revelations have emerged on alleged roles of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and private depot owners in the crisis.
As a result of the crisis, Nigerians have been buying fuel for between N280 and N350 per litre across the country, amid long queues at petrol stations. More so, a lot of productive hours are being wasted daily by Nigerians who wait endlessly on queues to get fuel and often get into fights, among other challenges.
Even as the general elections draw closer, the fuel scarcity is biting harder and masses have been begging for respite.
While some blame the Federal Government for the crisis, others lampoon fuel retailers and others involved in the petroleum value chain for hoarding and selling at exorbitant rates. The Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Dr Bukola Mutiu, who is in charge of Oyo and Osun states, urged Nigerians to desist from pointing accusing fingers at marketers, saying they should rather blame NNPC for colluding with private depot owners to frustrate them.
He alleged that the NNPC was monopolising the sector and operating without due diligence and proper oversight function on the private depots owners that were getting the petroleum products.
Mutiu accused NNPC of abandoning its 21 depots, which were meant for storage of petrol in dysfunctional states, and ignoring the means by which these moribund depots could be brought back to functional conditions because of private gains of the company’s top officials.
Like Nigeria’s four refineries under the management of NNPC, Mutiu said NNPC depot facilities had been redundant, and that the Company had been furnished with ways of resuscitating the facilities but rejected them because of the profits it was getting from employing the services of private depot owners.
He insisted that the company, being the sole importer of petrol in Nigeria, should be blamed for scarcity and rising prices of fuel, adding that the private depot owners were exploiting Nigerians by selling the commodity at the rate of N275 per litre to retailers, as against the approved NNPC rate of N180 per litre. Mutiu claimed that the NNPC was not carrying out due diligence on these major marketers to regulate how they sell the commodity because the company was benefiting from the monopolised system.
He said, “The situation we find ourselves is just uncalled for but once Fuel crisis: NNPC colluding with private depot owners to frustrate Nigerians – Marketers there is no way to solve it, we have to manage it the way it is.
As a petroleum business owner, or as a player at the downstream sector, that is IPMAN as a whole, we want to tell Nigerian citizens that we are not the cause of all these problems we are facing presently in this country. We are even paying through our noses because, as business owners, we are losing heavily day in, day out.
“So, the situation we find ourselves is because of lack of planning by rising prices of fuel, adding that the private depot owners were exploiting Nigerians by selling the commodity at the rate of N275 per litre to retailers, as against the approved NNPC rate of N180 per litre. Mutiu claimed that the NNPC was not carrying out due diligence on these major marketers to regulate how they sell the commodity because the company was benefiting from the monopolised system.
He said, “The situation we find ourselves is just uncalled for but once Fuel crisis: NNPC colluding with private depot owners to frustrate Nigerians – Marketers there is no way to solve it, we have to manage it the way it is. As a petroleum business owner, or as a player at the downstream sector, that is IPMAN as a whole, we want to tell Nigerian citizens that we are not the cause of all these problems we are facing presently in this country. We are even paying through our noses because, as business owners, we are losing heavily day in, day out.
“So, the situation we find ourselves is because of lack of planning by NNPC’s top management, because if you call yourselves managers, to manage such an important integral part of a nation, you should be able to know the level of consumption (of fuel) on a daily basis.
How do we plan to import? How do we plan to have more than enough supply?
So, it is just the law of demand and supply that is affecting us now; when the demand is far higher than the supply, the different things will set in and that’s what we have been witnessing now. “At the same time, I want the masses to understand that the petrol station owners called IPMAN are not the causes of all this problem we are facing. It has lingered more than necessary and government needs to come out and address it promptly because I see no reason why we are buying at these exorbitant prices from private depots in Lagos and selling to the masses in return.
As an oil producing country, we should have that privilege of ownership but the reverse is the case in our own part here. NNPC is the single and sole importer of petroleum products to this country and nobody can claim he or she imports a litre to this country, not even the major marketers. But the system they are adopting is somehow ridiculous and uncalled for.”
The chairman added, “We had a meeting with NNPC top management in Abuja recently and they told us that what was causing the fuel crisis was in two folds. Number one, foreign exchange. They claimed they did not have enough shares to buy products, that the little one they were getting from the CBN might not be enough for them to buy. That was the first excuse given to us by NNPC.
The second one was the Russia/Ukraine war that was affecting the movement of vessels on the high sea. NNPC said when they (Russia and Ukraine) were fighting, bigger vessels could not move because of that war. But, at the same time, is it not ridiculous that as an oil producing country, we had failed to plan then, between 1991 and a certain period when we were having excess of crude oil? All other big oil producing countries are planning to have multiple refineries even across all their states.
What did we do with our own then? Whatever we are suffering now is the implication of lack of planning. “Ordinarily, we are supposed to be enjoying the results of the war between Russia and Ukraine as an oil producing state in terms of what comes into our coffers. We would have been the best and major supplier of all these things to the Europeans and all the neighbouring African countries but when we could not supply our own, we had to be depending on another nation to survive.
So, those were the two excuses they gave to us. But, I disagreed with them because as a responsible manager that is supposed to handle such responsibility that will affect our economy, they should be able to plan ahead of time. They should have planned ahead to have it in stock so that we won’t be having all these kinds of crisis and the implication of it is that the price of the commodity will keep on increasing because of the outrageous costs from private depots in Lagos.”
According to him, the commodity is supposed to sell for between N180 and N190 per litre.
“We were to sell at N180 before but as I am speaking to you, there is no official memo of increase of prices of petroleum but we are buying from private depots at outrageous prices and NNPC caused all this.
They are benefiting from it,” he declared. Explaining why fuel stations sell their petrol at different prices from those of major marketers, Mutiu said it was because the NNPC had allowed a few major marketers to monopolise the downstream sector, adding that the Company had solutions to rescue Nigerians from the current frustration, but could not do anything because of benefits to a few individuals.
He said, “NNPC has challenges of how they can get products to their conventional depots such as NNPC Ibadan. In the South-West, we have five depots and none of them is working. We have one in Ibadan, one in Ore, one in Mosinmi, one in Satellite Town, Ejigbo; and the last one in Ilorin.
None of them is working and they are all owned by the NNPC. NNPC has 21 depots across the country but only five is in the South-West. And of these 21, none is working. So, when they could not get products to their moribund conventional depots, they resorted to using private depots to drop their fuel, to get it to the masses through us.
But in recent times, the game has changed. When they drop it at private depots, we will pay indirectly to NNPC and NNPC will communicate with the private depots because they have their staff there also. Once we pay to NNPC portal as duly registered marketers of NNPC, they assign us to a particular private depot to go and load.
Once we get there, we load it at the official rate of N148.17 and we add little transportation money to it. That was why we were selling at N180 and even lesser then. “But, for some period now, NNPC blocked that portal of customer express and does not allow us to pay in.
You make request online, you pay online, they programme you online and you just send your truck to any private depot that they claim to have fuel. That was then but for over eight months now, all those avenues have been totally blocked.
“Now, instead of buying it at N152 or at worse, N155 per litre, without truck, so that we will now sell at around N180 per litre, we are now buying at N275 per litre from the private depots. As a now, we have over 68 private depots in Lagos. We have over 40 in Warri and its environs. In Lagos, recently, it was only three or four private depots that had this product and they sold to us at N275 without transportation. Some private depots even sell at N280.”
“We have over 80 per cent of petrol stations but NNPC will leave us and be giving fuel to some individuals called major marketers who are about 20 per cent. Those that have tank farms. If NNPC is genuinely committed to helping this country, they should concentrate on giving petroleum products to the 80 per cent of people who own petrol stations and not to some few major marketers,” he added
