Imo Government urges oil marketers to end strike
IPMAN, Eastern Zone, cries out over non-functioning of NNPC depots, bad roads, multiple taxation
…Urges DPR to regulate products prices at tank farms
From Boniface Okoro, Umuahia
The Easter Zone of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has decried the unfriendly environment in which her members were operating, saying that NNPC’s double standards, bad roads, multiple taxation and revenue regimes of various states and local governments in the zone were threatening to run marketers in the zone out of business.
Chairman of Eastern Zone of IPMAN, Prince Bobby Eberechi Dick, who disclosed the plight of the petroleum marketers in a statement he issued and made available to newsmen in Umuahia on Tuesday, June 21, 2022, blamed NNPC for the high cost of petroleum products while lamenting that none of the five NNPC deports in the zone was functioning. He added that bad roads have made some of their members to lose their properties to the banks.
IPMAN, Eastern Zone comprises Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Rivers Kogi and Nasarawa states, which have their Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd loading depots in Aba, Calabar, Enugu, Markurdi and Port Harcourt. Each of these depots have about 3, 000 marketers registered with the NNPC, according to Dick.
Explaining why none of the NNPC depots in the zone were working at the moment, the IPMAN Zonal Chairman noted that NNPC, as the sole importer of petroleum products to Nigeria, was not pumping products to these depots.
Instead, Dick said, NNPC now prefers to sell products to middlemen who are private tank farm owners. He explained that these tank farm owners now decide how much they would sell to independent marketers, without recourse to the government-regulated price.
“The Department of Petroleum Resources (now Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Sector), watch vulnerably what these shylock private tank farm owners are doing. Instead, it is the ordinary independent petroleum marketer that will be forced to sell at a regulated price. Because we don’t have Godfathers or Godmothers, we are left to the whims and caprices of the NNPC,” Dick said.
He frowned at the deplorable condition of roads in the Eastern Zone, saying that all major roads in the zone were impassable and caused huge losses to petroleum marketers.
“From Calabar to Akwa Ibom, Port Harcourt to Aba, Port Harcourt to Imo statere, the roads are very bad. More worrisome is the fact that the very roads leading to NNPC depots, especially in the Eastern Zone, appear to be the worst hit. Every day our trucks fall on these roads, and we keep losing our borrowed funds from banks, who, as a result, dispose of our properties (being the collateral used to secure such loans), leaving our families homeless and traumatized,” the Chairman added.
Dick lamented that the rise in the price of diesel was gradually running independent marketers out of business, as transporting petroleum products from the private depots to the stations has become very herculean, just as it has become exorbitant to power their petrol stations.
“Also to power our stations have become strangulating. For instance, we use a minimum of 50 litres of diesel per day at a cost of about N40,000, yet we are forced to sell at a regulated price,” Dick said.
He further accused security agencies of extorting huge sums of money from independent petroleum marketers, even as enforcement of multiple and duplicated taxation, coupled with draconian revenue regimes of different states and local governments have continued to compound the woes and agonies of the marketers.
Dick, therefore, appealed to the federal government to resuscitate all the NNPC depots in the Port Harcourt zone (System 2E) and urged the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to regulate products prices at the private tank farms, to enable the petroleum marketers to sell at the regulated price.
