The lingering scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise called petrol, has inflicted great financial hardship on oil marketers, especially members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN). The financial losses have made some IPMAN members not only to shut their petrol stations from dispensing fuel to consumers but have converted the petrol stations to abattoirs, event centres, car parks and car lots, so as to raise money to keep servicing the stations.

The difficult has also made some of them relocate abroad in search of better means of livelihood. The Chairman, IPMAN, NNPC depot Ore, Western Zone of Nigeria, Engineer Shina Amoo, made these revelations in an interview with New Telegraph. He said: “Our members have turned their petrol stations into car parks, car lots and event centres.

Even some have turned their petrol stations where antelopes and other animals are killed. “We have been facing this problem for almost two years now and there is no help from anywhere. When we do not have official loading, some of us may not be able to sell at the approved price and some of us who are already selling, the money you will use to get a truck, some of our people may not be able to meet up. “A truck of PMS now, you multiply N225 by 45,000 litres, it is almost N11 million. What some of us are using for business is when you sell. How many will you share a truck with? That is what we are facing.

“The fuel scarcity is seriously having a toll on us. Some of us are selling. And the worst aspect of it is that these depots owners will sell to us from their own tank for N220, but they will load the same product from their own tank farm to their stations and sell at a pump price of N180 and we will be selling N250 or N270. Who is fooling who? Are they not etching us out of business? And the government is looking at this and there is no solution. “We expected them (government) to get a depot for us to dump and load to us officially. They are only doing the official loading for very few members who are their friends.

That is all. “The information that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has reached an agreement with IPMAN that our members will be loading directly from NNPCL depot is newspaper information. There is no implementation of it anywhere.

“Our call on the govenrment is to designate a depot for IPMAN to go and load officially where we will not be facing a lot of hues and cries that will bring about an increase in our landing cost. We can service the nation and bring out these queues within two days. We have done it before. We are experienced marketers. “It is possible that there is fuel as someone said there is fuel? If there is fuel, let them discharge in the private depot and give at least 1,000 IPMAN members the authority to load, this fuel scarcity will come down within two days, not even a week. It is a lie, they do not have the product.

“To have enough products, they should do massive importation or remove subsidy and let everybody go and import. Remove subsidy and let fuel be sold at normal price. Let the nation stop losing money on subsidy. The subsidy does not go into the pocket of the poor people, it goes into the pocket of the wealthy.

“This is what played out during the subsidy on kerosene. You will never see kerosene sell for N50 when they were subsidising and said kerosene should be N50 per litre everywhere. Did you see kerosene during that period sold for N50 per litre? It is either you see kerosene for N250, or N300 per litre that period. It was when they removed the subsidy that it normalised. “Now they should remove subsidy on PMS and everybody sees the light of the day as normalcy will return in PMS sales.

The pump price of petrol may go up initially after the removal of subsidy, but there will not be scarcity and because of competition, the price will come down. “Some of us will import PMS and when we import petrol and we want to see how we will capture the market share, competition will come in and competition brings out the best in you or your business transaction.

“When you study your business environment, and you see your competitor edging you out, nobody will tell you what to do before you start selling at a cheap rate. “My advice to our members during these hard times is for us to be patient, law-abiding and support the government of the day because what is happening now, the Nigerian problem is bigger and larger than President Muhammadu Buhari alone. Let us beg our people from our constituency, our local government to see how governance should benefit everybody, especially the masses. “To those who want to edge us out of business, they should have a fear of God.” He said 2022 had been a troubling year for marketers and generally the energy sector. Amoo said: “Since the beginning of 2022, we have been witnessing challenges in loading and distribution. Before now, we have been enjoying official loadings.

“But since this year, we have not been given an opportunity load officially, rather we have been getting the product from a third party. We have not been loading from NNPC through our license, our bulk purchase agreement we signed with PPMC with NNPC. “So we have been buying products from private depots owner even from December last year till today, we have not had official loading. I mean when you are buying products from NNPC at N148 and not from a third party. Third-party price is N210, N215, N220. “From the beginning of this year till the end, it has been full of challenges for marketers. No independent marketer will say he has benefitted either little or from NNPC that licensed us for loading that we should be getting official allocation from.