January 25, 2018

The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) in Ibadan says it is strengthening its regulatory and enforcement mechanisms in order to check erring fuel marketers as scarcity of the product bites harder across the country.

Mr Oluyemi Olaonipekun, DPR acting Operations Controller, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Thursday.

Olaonipekun spoke against the backdrop of the acute shortage of the product in the last three weeks.

He said that the DPR in Ibadan had continued to pursue its regulatory and monitoring mandate in Oyo and Osun in the face of the scarcity.

According to him, DPR teams go out to monitor the amount of fuel supplied as well as ensure sale at regulated price..

“So far, we have been able to cover Oyo and Osun states; there is no city or town in these two states that we have not visited in the last three or four weeks.

“We have gone as far as Iwere, Saki, Kisi, Okuku, Ife, Ilesha and not only once. We have visited them more than three to four times within four weeks.

“What we can do is to monitor whatever gets to all these locations and to ensure that it gets there; and that is what we have been doing and it is continuous,” he said.

He further said that two monitoring teams were out within Ibadan metropolis on Thursday to ensure that fuel was sold at control price.

“The DPR is on surveillance and we also act on complaints from the members of public,” he said.

Some motorists and commuters, who spoke to NAN, said getting fuel had been difficult in the last couple of weeks.

They said that it was usual to find long queues at stations selling at N145 per litre while those selling between N180 and N200 per litre had few customers.