This has continued to subject government’s efforts to end the long queues to further jeopardy and worsened the fuel scarcity rocking Nigeria, especially the lingering acute shortage of the product in Lagos. Further checks showed that part of this diverted product also in the last ten days landed in some suburb of Lagos and Ogun states “where the product can conveniently be sold at cost above the pump price without harrasment from DPR or protest from motorists.”
The Loading schedules of all the major depots and seven indigenous depots in Apapa showed an average cumulative loading capacity of 200 trucks daily. But due to the shortfall in fuel importation by the NNPC, a major marketer revealed after his anonymity was guaranteed that, “depots in Apapa are doing less than 100 due to shortage of product for thruput.”
He said: “Major marketers, except MRS, are doing their normal loading; no extra-loading, whereas the seven independents that are being used by NNPC for its thruput scheme, have instruction from the minister and GMD to be doing extra loading.
“In all, we truck out about 100 tankers every day for the past 10 days out of which Lagos get a lager volume. “The supply to Lagos in the last 10 days should have tremendously doused the scarcity in Lagos by now, if not for the on-going high-wired racketeering.
“Capital Oil and Aiteo have not loaded since Monday due to shortage of supply from the NNPC but this did not stop the loading and trucking out of 100 tanker daily. The situation at the Capital was noticed after an accident close to the facility in which three marketers were crushed to death by a tanker penultimate Thursday.
“Before this a protest had earlier been held by marketers with about 200 truck loading tickets at Capital Oil when NNPC allegedly directed that the depot should be loading trucks for it mega stations while the marketers’ loading programme should wait until when another vessel would arrive.”
Checks by Saturday Telegraph, however, showed that some filling stations are yet to have supply while long queues are still noticed at filling stations with the product. However filling stations at boarder towns of Ilashe, Idiroko, Owode, Ajilete and along the Sango-Ota- Idiroko road have the product in surplus. Independent marketers are majorly the culprits of this diversion while a few major also aided and abetted the diversion, especially when and where monitoring mechanism from their head office is weak,” the source said.
An independent marketer who preferred to be anonymous justified the diversion in a chat with Saturday Telegraph. “We are in business my brother and truth of the matter is that we do not buy at the ex-depot price in Apapa. Aside from this, motorists in Lagos are troublesome; they will not only refuse to buy above the pump price but also cause problems for any station that attempts to sell above the price.
“We have complained and nobody comes to our rescue. So, it makes more economic sense to buy at above ex-depot price with Lagos ticket and resell to another station which will be able to sell above the pump price-of course they are usually at Lagos and Ogun states’ suburbs and as far as border towns between Nigeria and Benn Republic,” he said.
Asked how many truck loads were diverted daily, he said: “Between nine and 14 trucks but this will depend on the demand for its at the market.” Spokesperson for the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Mrs. Dorothy Bassey, could not be reached on phone when our correspondent called her mobile phone number. She did not also respond to an SMS sent to her for clarification on what the DPR is doing to stop product diversion and profiteering by some marketers.
The DPR, an agency saddled with regulatory and enforcement responsibilities, has recently been quiet on its activities to check hoarding, profiteering and diversion of the product.
