The Punch Newspaper today reports the current fuel scarcity in some parts of the country including Lagos may last for another three weeks.
The Chairman, South-West chapter, Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Mr. Tokunbo Korodo, who spoke with Punch correspondents on Sunday, said that most of the depots in the country were already empty, adding that the available product could not meet the national demand, hence the queues.
He, however, said the situation would take about three to four weeks to ease considering the fact that marketers only received the import allocation for the first quarter last week.
Korodo, said,
“There was a delay in the approval of import allocation to the marketers. The import allocation was given last week and you know everything has a due process. The marketers will have to contact their banks, order for the product, and ship the product to Nigeria. As such, it will take three to four weeks for the product to get to the Nigerian soil. Had it been that the government was proactive enough to give approval to them in time, we will not be in this situation; and now, we should be thinking about the approval for the second quarter because this is March already…..
If the NNPC can release whatever they have in their own stock to all the marketers that have facilities to distribute and dispense, the scarcity will be quenched. We all know that the NNPC’s ability to distribute petroleum products is being hampered as a result of vandalism of pipelines. Therefore, it is distributing through some private facilities, but it has preference in releasing products to the marketers. But if the NNPC can release the products it has in its stock to all the marketers, this ugly situation will be quickly arrested. But if it continues to give preference to some marketers, the situation will continue to escalate.”
The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency released the import allocation for the first quarter last week, but expert said it came after the product stocked by most marketers had already dried up.
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