Oil marketers have said that the fuel scarcity being experienced in Abuja will not spread to Lagos State and other parts of the country.
In a telephone conversation with The PUNCH on Wednesday, the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, the Independent Product Marketers Association of Nigeria, and the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, unanimously said the state oil firm (NNPC) was on top of the situation.
While lending their voices to the reasons behind current fuel scarcity being experienced in Abuja just a few weeks after it abated due to the importation of contaminated products into the country, former Executive Secretary, MOMAN, Clement Isong, told The PUNCH that the scarcity was due to the Sallah break.
He said tanker drivers had abandoned their trucks and travelled for the Sallah holiday.
“No, the scarcity won’t spread to Lagos and other parts of Nigeria. It will be resolved by the weekend because NNPC has increased the number of trucks to Abuja,” he said, adding that 150 trucks were released to Abuja between Tuesday and Wednesday.
“The drivers simply just parked their trucks and went for the Sallah break, and they are yet to fully return,” he said.
On his part, the IPMAN National President, Chinedu Okoronkwo, said the cost of transporting the products to the North increased, adding, however, that the NNPC had taken control of the situation.
“Cost of taking the product to Abuja increased due to scarcity of gas and diesel, but the NNPC found its way around the situation,” he said.
He added that the IPMAN was “in talks with NNPC at the moment. Let’s just give them till the end of the week, then, we can take it up from there.”
The Executive Secretary, DAPPMAN, Olufemi Adewole, also reiterated that the scarcity would not spread to Lagos and other parts of the country.
He advised the masses to resist panic-buying.
Long fuel queues had re-appeared in Abuja immediately after the Sallah break, causing uproar and panic in the city.
However, the NNPC, in a statement, had cautioned Nigerians not to engage in panic-buying of petrol, saying it had enough product for the country.
According to the Corporation, the sudden appearance of fuel queues in parts of Abuja was due to low loadouts at depots, which usually happened during long public holidays.
The NNPC said it had over 2.5 billion litres of petrol in stock with a sufficiency of more than 43 days.
