The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has requested the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited to sell fuel to its marketers at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery rate.
Abubakar Shettima, IPMAN’s National President, stated on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’ program, “Our major challenge now is that already, we have an outstanding debt by the NNPC and the company collected product through Dangote refinery at a lower rate — not up to N900.”
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Shettima explained on Thursday that IPMAN’s money has been with NNPC for almost three months.
He added that NNPC directed IPMAN members to buy the product from them at higher rates: N1,010 in Lagos, N1,045 in Calabar, N1,050 in Port Harcourt, and N1,040 in Warri.
“We have a problem with that because already, we buy products from them.
“So when they made this increment, they told us to add money and buy above what Dangote is selling products to them. That is the reason why we told them to return our monies to our banks so that we can go directly to Dangote refinery and buy, if that’s the case,” Shettima said.
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According to him, NNPC does not sell on credit, and IPMAN buys products ahead of loading.
” Anytime they have products, they will call us to collect our products,” he said.
“As independent marketers, we cannot load because since they made this increment, we did not load a single truck because we have to pay cash before we load the products and the cash down is already with NNPC.
“NNPC refused to load us. They told us to complete the difference and that is not a small thing because there are some formalities we have to follow before we do that,” he added.
The downstream market is now fully deregulated, allowing every marketer to purchase petrol from the Dangote refinery. However, patronage at filling stations is low due to the high prices.
This development follows NNPC’s recent increase in petrol prices across its retail outlets to N998 per litre in Lagos and N1,030 in Abuja on October 9.
