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YULETIDE: IPMAN advises Nigerian govt on solution to curb fuel crisis

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As Christmas and New Year celebrations beckon, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association (IPMAN), Aba Depot Unit, has tasked the Federal Government on massive importation of fuel to curb crisis.

The Executive Chairman of the unit, Mazi Oliver Okolo, stated this after a meeting with the Abia State Commissioner for Petroleum, Chief Sam Nwanganga, on Saturday.

Private marketers have been blamed for the prevailing fuel crisis across different parts of the country, a situation that has continued to impair businesses as Nigerians groan about hikes in food prices and others.

Okolo, who admitted that the product in the country was insufficient to serve Nigerians, tasked the government on alleviating suffering occasioned by the crisis.

He also blamed the federal government over failure to mandate NNPC to pay marketers their direct allocation.

“We are not expecting anything unless there is a quick intervention where they will give us direct allocations and we can load the product and truck it out. They can bring in more vessels and naturally, the fuel situation would disappear”, Okolo said.

READ ALSO:FUEL SCARCITY: IPMAN threatens shutdown over DSS warning

“All of us are worried. We are suffering. We told the government our predicament, that we cannot get the allocation directly, and that we are pleading with them to see if they can help us talk to NNPC top management to give us our direct allocation because we have a contract with them.

“We are their marketers. We are supposed to have a direct allocation from them which they are not giving us. Rather, they are compelling us to go and buy the product from the tank farms and those tank farms are filling those products at a very high cost.

“A recent payment was N225 per litre in Port Harcourt. Concerning the cost of transport and other logistics, the landing cost will probably be at about N235 per litre and we may be selling at N245 or thereabout. This is a reasonable margin.

“We have agreed with the Commissioner for Petroleum and his team, that they will help us to see if we can get this product directly from the government and let everybody monitor it back to our stations, and that we will sell products at the normal price which the government has approved.”

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