Expect situation to get worse – Marketers tell Nigerians

Oil marketers in Nigeria have warned that the fuel scarcity currently being experienced in the country is likely to get worse.

The marketers further said that the insincerity of the Federal Government is the reason for the continued scarcity, Vanguard reports.

“Nigerians should hold the Federal Government responsible for the sufferings they are currently passing through,” one marketer said.

“This government was aware of outstanding subsidy claims from their first day in office, but they had to wait for six months, until Nigerians could no longer bear the suffering in silence, before they took any action,” he added.

Nigeria has been plagued by continuous fuel shortages, the worst of which occurred in May 2015 and almost shut the country down.

The Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Sunny Nkpe, told Pulse in May that the fuel crises occur because the country is not using its refineries.

He stated further that Nigeria’s refineries can produce 50-60% of the fuel the country needs.

“We have refineries that can refine 450,000 barrels of crude oil per day, that’s millions of litres of refined product,” he said. “Why are we not using the refineries? Let them use the refineries,” Nkpe added.

Another industry insider, who chose to remain anonymous, told Pulse that the relevant government agencies at the time refused to use the local refineries to produce the country’s needs because there’s much more money to be fraudulently gotten from importing the product.

“They are knowingly boycotting the refineries,” she said. “They make more money with importation due to corruption and fraud,” she added.

The fuel subsidy regime in Nigeria has come to be viewed as a huge scam, a notion buttressed by the 2014 arrest of 121 suspects, who were believed to have benefited illegally from it, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

READ: Nigerians are to blame for fuel scarcity

President Muhammadu Buhari is currently Nigeria’s substantive Petroleum Minister, a position which he says he decided to occupy in order to clean up the sector due to the effects of decades of corruption.

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