BY Bunmi Aduloju
The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has asked the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited to sell premium motor spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, to its marketers at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery rate or refund the oil marketers’ money.
Speaking on Channels TV ‘Sunrise Daily’ programme on Thursday, Abubakar Shettima, national president of IPMAN, said the marketers’ money has been with the national oil company for three months.
“Our major challenge now is that already, we have an outstanding debt by the NNPC and the company collected product through Dangote refinery at a lower rate — not up to N900,” the IPMAN president said.
“Presently, our money has been with them (NNPC) for almost three months.”
He said the national oil company has directed the IPMAN members “to buy the product from them at the rate of N1,010 in Lagos, N1,045 in Calabar, N1,050 in Port Harcourt, and N1,040 in Warri”.
Speaking further, Shettima expressed displeasure at the NNPC’s stance that marketers should buy petrol directly from the Dangote refinery.
“We have a problem with that because already, we buy products from them,” he said.
“So when they made this increment, they told us to add money and buy above what Dangote is selling products to them.
“That is the reason why we told them to return our monies to our banks so that we can go directly to Dangote refinery and buy, if that’s the case.”
He said the NNPC does not sell on credit and “we buy products ahead of loading”.
“Anytime they have products, they will call us to collect our products,” Shettima said.
‘DOWNSTREAM MARKET FULLY DEREGULATED’
Shettima said the downstream market is now fully deregulated and as a result, every marketer can purchase petrol from the Dangote refinery.
Due to the deregulated prices, he said patronage at filling stations is low.
“As independent marketers, we can not be able to load because since they made this increment, we did not load a single truck because we have to pay cash before we load the products and the cash down is already with NNPC,” Shettima said.
“NNPC refused to load us. They told us to complete the difference and that is not a small thing because there are some formalities we have to follow before we do that.”
On October 9, the NNPC increased the price of petrol across its retail outlets to N998 per litre in Lagos, and N1,003 in Abuja.
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