The apprehension and prosecution of unscrupulous petroleum products dealers in the creeks is the only panacea to the adulteration of kerosene in the country.

This was the position of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) Port Harcourt Zonal Chairman, Comrade Godwin Eruba.

Eruba told The Tide in an exclusive interview in his office in Port Harcourt, recently that the decision to inject 50million litres of kerosene into the market would help in mitigating scarcity of the product, but stressed that this may not eliminate adulteration as some criminally-minded businessmen, who may want to reap where they did not sow, would always want to capitalize on the high cost of kerosene to adulterate it.

According to him, kerosene has always been higher than petroleum motor spirit (PMS), popularly called fuel, noting that chances are that criminally-minded businessmen would always be tempted to adulterate it in order to make more money.

“In addition to pumping more kerosene into the market, security agencies should comb the creeks, where they have these make-shift refineries to flush out these criminally-minded businessmen”, he said, adding that “the security operatives should go after them, apprehend them and prosecute them”.

Eruba charged the Federal Government to give equal attention given PMS to kerosene as everybody relies on the product for cooking due to the epileptic power supply in the country.

He explained that because people need to light up their lanterns, kerosene was in very high demand, and important even more than PMS.

The NUPENG chieftain regretted that the claimed subsidization of kerosene by the government was not visible to the end users as the pump price of the product was higher than expected.

He said that domestic gas was having similar challenge of high cost, as “it is like being in the river, and washing with sputum”.

Eruba pointed out that the only way to solve the problem was for the government to make local refineries operate efficiently at nameplate capacity, so as the augment the imported products, adding that with such balancing act, scarcity would be put behind us as a nation.

It would be recalled that in order curb the ugly situation created by the scarcity of mostly kerosene across the country, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), recently injected additional 50million litres of kerosene into the market through its subsidiary, Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC).

Group General Manager, Public Affairs, Dr Levi Ajuonuma, had explained that 18million litres of kerosene were loaded out of NIPCO for independent marketers, 12.2million litres out of Capital Oil for the NNPC retail stations, and 17.4million litres pumped to Mosimi depot from Atlas Cove for onward supply to Ibadan, Ore, Ilorin, and environs.

Ajuonuma, while expressing concern at the development, had advised Nigerians to buy their kerosene from NNPC retail outlets or other government-licensed selling points to avoid being cut in the web of kerosene explosions that had recently rattled the nation and claimed many lives.