Another factor hobbling the early end to the intractable fuel scarcity squeezing the nations since December last year has been revealed by the leadership of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN).
President of IPMAN, Mr. Chinedu Okoronkwo, who briefed journalists at the National Assembly in Abuja revealed that multiple charges in the importation of petroleum products especially those collected in dollars by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) is doping much damage to the operations of independent marketers.
While hinting that “Some of these charges, looking at the pricing template, are not captured,”, Okoronkwo decried that payment of charges imposed by agencies of the Federal Government in dollars was raising the cost of importing the product beyond sales at N145.
Without missing word, he called on the government to prevail on the NPA and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to stop collecting charges contained in the pricing template in dollars.
Checks in parts of the country over the weekend showed that fuel scarcity is not easing any longer as the product still sells far above N220 in parts of South East and between N170 and N200 in some South West states including Lagos.
Many petrol stations, particularly those being operated by independent oil marketers, were shut as fuel attendants claimed that they had no product to dispense.
However, some few stations run by major oil marketers and the NNPC sold the product to hundreds of petrol seekers, who spent hours in queues before they could be served.
Just as only NorthWest Oil and Gas fuel station and NNPC sell at regulated price in Asaba, two stations, Conoil and Total, located opposite the corporate headquarters of the NNPC in Abuja, had lengthy queues of motorists, while the corporation’s two largest mega stations along the Kubwa-Zuba Expressway had queues that stretched several kilometers over the weekend.
