The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has said it is demanding a refund of its members’ money in the possession of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, if it will not sell petrol to them at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery rate.
National president of IPMAN, Abubakar Shettima, said this in an interview on Channels TV ‘Sunrise Daily’ programme on Thursday.
According to him, the marketers’ money has been with the national oil company for three months.
“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.
“Presently, our money has been with them (NNPC) for almost three months,” the IPMAN president said.
Shettima said the national oil company has directed the IPMAN members “to buy the product from them at the rate of N1,010 in Lagos, N1,045 in Calabar, N1,050 in Port Harcourt, and N1,040 in Warri”.
He, however, expressed displeasure at the NNPC’s stance that marketers should buy petrol directly from the Dangote refinery.
“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,” he stated.
According to Shettima, the NNPC does not sell on credit and “we buy products ahead of loading”.
“Anytime they have products, they will call us to collect our products,” he added.
Shettima said the downstream market is now fully deregulated and as a result, every marketer can purchase petrol from the Dangote refinery.
Due to the deregulated prices, he said patronage at filling stations is low.
“As independent marketers, we can not be able to 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,” Shettima said.
“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,” the IPMAN president added.
