A key demand from striking petrol tanker drivers in Nigeria is a review of the freighting charges incurred by marketers to transport fuel across Nigeria which they say is no longer realistic.
The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the body charged with fixing prices of petroleum products develop pricing template at prevailing market conditions.
The pricing template always includes landing cost, the ex-depot price which is the price that products marketers are obligated to pay for the products they lift, and a bridging cost which acts as a form of subsidy, among others.
Nigeria’s over 6,000 kilometres of petroleum products pipeline infrastructure are old and some in advanced stages of decay, worse still they are vulnerable to attacks by criminals.
To achieve a national petroleum products distribution, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), through its subsidiary PPPRA, pays a form of subsidy to tanker operators to distribute fuel from the ports in the south to northern parts of the country.
When the Federal government announced an adjusted price of petrol from N86.50 per litre to N145 per litre on May 11 last year, due to volatility in the exchange rate, it also raised bridging cost from N4 to N6.20 per litre.
But the transporters say a review is long overdue. While the tankers are owned by the Nigeria Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), it hires members of a group Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) to drive them.
NARTO demanded increased bridging claims from government but were unsuccessful and they attribute this as a reason for poor remuneration of their drivers hence the strike by tanker drivers.
There are other issues too involved beyond the claims. “The tanker drivers for the past three years have been appealing to the Nigeria Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) to increase their salary (tanker drivers) but they refused on the ground that spare parts had increased,” says Tokunbo Korodo, south west chairman of Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) at a press conference announcing the strike action.
He further said, “NARTO said that government has not increased their fares, so they will not increase their salary. Apart from this, most of the roads they ply are bad and this has resulted in accidents or damages to their trucks.
Korodo also decried the activities of security operatives, “ The activities of the official of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps on the roads is not helping the matter, the tanker drivers are forced to break the seal of their product on the pretext that they were carrying adulterated product.
“Most of these drivers are harassed by these officers, at times the tanker and the driver will be detained for close to a month,’’ Korodo said.
A system prone to abuse
In the past, bridging claims have been subjected to intense examinations as there are reports the system have been abused. Some tanker drivers have been accused of supplying the products to filling stations in the south where the markets are more lucrative and still come back to claim freight charges.
NNPC developed a system of placing trackers on the tankers loaded in depots in Lagos to monitor their movement across the country.
Industry operators say while these may have reduced the fraud in bridging claims, it may have necessitated a situation where the process is interrogated more closely and operators demand value for the service.
Analysts say a total liberalisation of the downstream sector and the removal of price cap on petrol price will resolve issues with bridging claims, something the government has to balance with the possibility of a popular revolt in the event of a price increase.
ISAAC ANYAOGU
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