Posted on: 04:24 Tue, 08 Dec 2015



According to Pulse Ng, Oil marketers in
Nigeria have warned that the fuel
scarcity currently being experienced in
the country is likely to get worse.

The marketers further said that the
insincerity of the Federal
Government is the reason for the
continued scarcity, Vanguard
reports.

“Nigerians should hold the Federal
Government responsible for the
sufferings they are currently passing
through,” one marketer said.

“This government was aware of
outstanding subsidy claims from their
first day in office, but they had to
wait for six months, until Nigerians
could no longer bear the suffering in
silence, before they took any action,”
he added.

Nigeria has been plagued by
continuous fuel shortages, the worst
of which occurred in May 2015 and
almost shut the country down.

The Chairman of the Independent
Petroleum Marketers Association of
Nigeria (IPMAN), Sunny Nkpe, told
Pulse in May that the fuel crises
occur because the country is not
using its refineries.

He stated further that Nigeria’s
refineries can produce 50-60% of the
fuel the country needs.

“We have refineries that can refine
450,000 barrels of crude oil per day,
that’s millions of litres of refined
product,” he said.

“Why are we not using the refineries?
Let them use the refineries,” Nkpe
added.

Another industry insider, who chose
to remain anonymous, told Pulse that
the relevant government agencies at
the time refused to use the local
refineries to produce the country’s
needs because there’s much more
money to be fraudulently gotten
from importing the product.

“They are knowingly boycotting the
refineries,” she said. “They make
more money with importation due to
corruption and fraud,” she added.

The fuel subsidy regime in Nigeria
has come to be viewed as a huge
scam, a notion buttressed by the
2014 arrest of 121 suspects, who
were believed to have benefited
illegally from it, by the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC).

President Muhammadu Buhari is
currently Nigeria’s substantive
Petroleum Minister, a position which
he says he decided to occupy in
order to clean up the sector due to
the effects of decades of corruption.