The high cost of sourcing petroleum products from third-party marketers other than the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) has reportedly led to many filling stations in Aba shutting down.
Sunday Punch reveals that some filling stations in the Abia State commercial city that sell petrol to the people at prices between N1300 and N1350 were the ones that lifted the products at costs more than NNPC control prices.
The Executive Chairman, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Aba branch, Mazi Oliver Okolo, told the newspaper that the NNPCL had not supplied petroleum products to their members in the past three months.
He said the NNPCL had been selling the products to some suppliers, who indirectly sell the product to the IPMAN members at exorbitant prices.
Okolo said, “Our members now lift petrol at high costs and sell to motorists and other users at high cost,” adding that if the refineries were working, people would buy petrol at affordable prices.
He therefore called on the federal government to make the 21 NNPC refineries in the country functional to reduce the sufferings of the people.