Fuel Scarcity Won’t Surface Again, IPMAN Assures

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association (IPMAN), has assured that the perennial scarcity of petroleum products experienced in the past will not re-surface again in the country.

Speaking with The Tide in an exclusive interview in his office at Eleme last Thursday, the Port Harcourt Unit Chairman of IPMAN, Chief Samuel Onura Asaro-Ejor, stated that IPMAN has worked out modalities that has helped put to permanent end the problem of fuel scarcity in Nigeria.

Part of the strategy, according to him, is the agreement reached with the Federal Government, represented by the minister of petroleum and the group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to partner with the aim of stamping out scarcity of petroleum products in the nation.

He stressed that the result of the agreement is the creation of the War Room at the headquarters in Abuja to monitor and track the movement of all trucks and facilities required to make products available for the citizenry.

To sustain the momentum, Asaro-Ejor noted that IPMAN had formed a strong  partnership with a Lagos-based downstream firm, NIPCO Plc, to flood all nooks and crannies of the country with products. 

The IPMAN boss attributed the perennial scarcity experienced in the past to over dependence on the major marketers, and the non-functioning of local refineries, which resulted in 100 per cent reliance on imported products, saying that now that IPMAN members were allowed to lift products from NNPC, the products have become more easily available to motorists and other consumers.

On the proposed deregulation of the downstream sector, the IPMAN chairman said the association was not against deregulation as a policy, but listed conditions that could make the policy effective and beneficial to Nigerians.

Such conditions, he said, include the resuscitation and functionality of the local refineries, the establishment of more refineries, the replacement of all vandalised pipelines, and revival of depots in Aba, Enugu, Makurdi, and others that have been dormant for years now.

Beemene Taneh & Goka Wikere