April 29, 2024

Marketers have blamed the fresh scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly known as petrol on a supply challenge from the major oil supplier in the country, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited.

The National President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Billy Gillis-Harry, made this known on Monday on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief breakfast programme.

The fresh fuel scarcity has grounded many economic activities in states across the Federation as Nigerians queue up at filling stations nationwide.

While some motorists were lucky to get fuel at some retail outlets for between N700 and N,1200 per litre after hours of sweat and contest, others weren’t so lucky as many retail outlets were shut, with their excuse being supply challenge.

The shortage of the premium product saw the black marketers selling the petrol for as high as N2,000 per litre in states.

Black marketers in action

Snake-like queues at filling stations in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kano and other places have worsened the traffic situation in the states as the long queues spilt on major roads, hindering movement just as thousands of people were stranded at bus stops with transport fares as high as double the former amounts.

Though many outlets owned by independent oil marketers remained shut, checks by our correspondent in Lagos showed that NNPC retail outlets sell petrol at N568 per litre but not many motorists could survive the unending queues and jostling for sometimes six hours.

However, PETROAN boss, Billy Gillis-Harry, said the supply challenge has not been resolved though he acknowledged efforts by NNPC to solve the problem.

Gillis-Harry said, “NNPC has its own outlets that they also serve. So if they have some logistics issues, that will possibly be what is internal to NNPC. But as for us, PETROAN members, we can tell Nigerians for real that if we have petroleum products delivered to us, supply to us upon payment for those same products, we will supply to Nigerians.

“I would like to correct Nigerians that we retail outlet owners or marketers as they generally call all of us is the reason for this. We do not have any reason not to serve the public and we are willing to serve the public. All that is required is for us to have petroleum products delivered to us from NNPC and we will make sure that our retail outlets are open, some of them are even open for 24 hours.

“The challenge of logistics is only relevant to the NNPC retail outlets.”