The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has said that the National National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited buys petrol at N898/litre but sells to its members at N1,010/litre in Lagos, threatening to stop operations.
Speaking on Channels TV ‘Sunrise Daily’ programme on Thursday, Abubakar Maigandi, national president of IPMAN, threatened to stop operations over the price, noting that marketers paid NNPC for petrol but have not received the product for three months.
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“Our major challenge now is that, already, we have an outstanding debt by the NNPC and the company collected product through Dangote refinery at a lower rate, not up to N900. Presently, our money has been with them (NNPC) for almost three months.” the IPMAN president said.
“We have a problem with that because we buy products from them, which is is the reason why we told them to return our monies to our banks so that we can go directly to Dangote refinery and buy, if that’s the case.”
Nigeria has fully deregulated its downstream petroleum sector as prices are now determined by the forces of demand and supply. Africa’s most populous nation now sells petrol at N1,030/litre and above at several petrol stations, putting and end to the costly subsidy. Dangote Petroleum Refinery has supplied petrol to the NNPC, who was until now the sole buyer of Dangote petrol.
Read Also: IPMAN threatens to halt petroleum products supply nationwide over N200bn debt
According to Maigandi, the NNPC does not sell on credit and marketers buy products ahead of loading, noting that the downstream market is fully deregulated and every marketer is supposed to purchase petrol from the Dangote refinery.
“As independent marketers, we can not be able to load because since they made this increment, we did not load a single truck because we have to pay cash before we load the products and the cash down is already with NNPC,” Shettima further said.
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