The Federal Government yesterday moved further to end the lingering fuel crisis in the country with the setting up of a 14-man committee to interface with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) on fuel distribution and enforcement of the official pump price by marketers. Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, who inaugurated the committee in Abuja, also mandated the committee to do everything possible to bring peace back to Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) at the national, zonal and depot levels.
The committee chaired by Prince I. Dunuje, according to checks by New Telegraph, was with the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari, who has directed the minister to see to the need of bringing IPMAN together as one and indivisible entity.
T he committee, according to the NNPC, is also reconciliatory/interim management committee, which is “to see to the total resolution of the crisis bedeviling IPMAN at all levels.”
The committee “is to ensure that marketers get their products and sell same at government approved price.” Kachikwu noted that as critical stakeholders in the downstream sector, the contribution of IPMAN is crucial in the drive to end the prevailing fuel supply situation across the nation.
The minister, who called on all members to see IPMAN as one indivisible entity, also charged them to work with relevant government agencies such as the NNPC, Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and other stakeholders to ensure that the prevailing fuel scarcity “becomes a thing of the past as quickly as possible.”
Speaking shortly after the deliberations, the National Secretary of IPMAN, Alhaji Danladi Pasali, expressed their readiness to assist the Federal Government towards bringing a lasting solution to the fuel situation in the country within the next two weeks as stated by Kachikwu during a recent meeting with the Senate Committee on Petroleum Downstream.
