THE Senate has ordered the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to end petroleum products’ scarcity within two weeks.
The upper chamber said notable sharp practices, including discrepancies in prices of petroleum products, such as Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), and hoarding of products, should be stopped.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) Senator Lillian Ekwunife gave the order yesterday at a meeting with officials of the ministry and its parastatals in Abuja.
The Senate, on Tuesday, asked the committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the perennial fuel scarcity in the country.
Mrs. Ekwunife insisted that the citizens were not interested in efforts by the NNPC, Pipeline Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and other agencies to ease the biting fuel scarcity.
“We are mandating the minister, the permanent secretary and other relevant agencies to end fuel scarcity in two weeks. Discrepancies in prices of products must also end,” she said.
The lawmaker said the committee would like to know why the country’s refineries were no longer working and why fuel scarcity had become perennial.
Nigerians, she noted, were being faced with fuel scarcity once again in the last one month.
The Anambra Central senator said the committee would like to know the marketers, who would be paid N413 billion oil subsidy requested by President Muhammadu Buhari in his supplementary budget, which is before the National Assembly for approval.
Mrs. Ekwunife, who said the Senate was aware that not all claims by marketers were factual, gave the Petroleum Products Regulatory Agency (PPRA) 24 hours to submit documents detailing subsidy claims by marketers to the committee.
The Senate, she said, was aware that some of the marketers engage in sharp practices aimed at defrauding the country.
Vice Chairman of the committee Senator Barau Jibrin reminded the officials that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration was elected based on the change mantra.
He noted that in line with the change mantra, the country must change for the better.
The senator said the Senate was seeking a permanent solution to fuel scarcity.
The Kano North lawmaker wondered why the country was still paying the same amount of subsidy when crude price has crashed.
He said: “When the price of crude was $140pb, we paid a certain amount as subsidy. Now the price has crashed to about $40, we are still paying the same amount. We want to know what is happening.”
Executive Secretary, PPRA Ahmed Farouk told the committee that subsidy elements were driven by the price of gasoline.
He added that the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, had directed that unnecessary costs connected to importation of products should be eliminated.
He said outstanding “subsidy arrears for 2014 is N120 billion while the outstanding subsidy payment for 2015 up to October 31 is N294 billion, totalling N414 billion”.
He added that outstanding subsidy payment was based on actual discharges.
The committee demanded to know the number of marketers involved, but the executive secretary did not give the figure.
The committee was also worried that the supplementary budget for subsidy did not cover November and December 2015.
On why fuel scarcity persisted, the Executive Secretary, PPMC, Babatunde Adeniran, blamed it on marketers, who failed to import products.
Adeniran said it was only the PPMC that was importing products.
He added that the security agents were brought in to assist when sharp practices were observed in the supply chain.
The PPMC executive secretary noted that to avoid recurring scarcity, “subsidy money has to be paid as at when due”.
He said they were also working to fix broken pipelines.
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Jamila Shu’ara, stressed the need to build strategic product reserve depots.
The PPMC’s Managing Director, Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, lamented that some people in the industry were sabotaging PPMC’s efforts to stabilise fuel supply.
Some marketers, she said, were not helping matters, adding that some marketers, instead of discharging products at designated filling stations, connived to sell some to black marketers.
Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue noted that her officials were spending sleepless nights monitoring the supply of products to filling stations with the aim of preventing sharp practices.
END
Be the first to comment