The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) on Wednesday said that petrol allocation by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to Ibadan depot was grossly inadequate.
Raimi Tayo, Ibadan Depot IPMAN Chapter Chairman, said that marketers had resorted to loading at Apapa private depots due to non-availability of the product in Ibadan.
According to him, independent marketers hardly load up to 10 trucks daily as against the usual 90 trucks.
He said that the situation was causing scarcity in the hinterlands, adding that the depot had not received adequate supply in the last one month.
Tayo said that the depot had reduced its daily loadings to 400,000 litres from its previous six million litres per day.
He said the development had negatively affected independent marketers who were unable to break-even since the depot started facing the challenge.
The chairman said that pipeline vandalism was a major challenge facing product supply to the depot and appealed to Federal Government to salvage the situation.
“Our members are faced with serious challenges loading from private depots in Apapa in the last one month as petroleum products allocated to Ibadan depot was grossly inadequate.
“We are appealing to government, through the NNPC, to pump enough products to the depot so that marketers can remain in business.
“We also call on the government to outsource the pipeline surveillance to private firms if the security agencies entrusted with securing the pipeline network had compromised,” he said.
The IPMAN chairman appealed to NNPC to make petrol available to marketers at depots to ease distribution to hinterlands.
He said that sourcing of product from private depots was totally wrong and unprofitable when there were five depots in the south-west region, namely: Mosinmi, Ejigbo, Ibadan, Ore and Ilorin.
Tayo noted that pipeline vandalism and inadequate pumping of petroleum products from Mosinmi to Ibadan was also a challenge.
He said that the IPMAN surveillance team against pipeline vandalism from Mosinmi was being frustrated, thus causing the nation huge losses.
“It is our collective responsibility to check and bring pipeline criminals to book,” he said.
