Scarcity: Depots, NPA dump PPPRA pricing template –Investigation

By Adewale Sanyaolu

EFFORTS by the Federal Government to ease the cur­rent fuel scarcity may have been sabotaged by some critical stakeholders within the petroleum products sup­ply chain, a development that has further compounded the shortage of petroleum prod­ucts, Daily Sun investigation has revealed.

The stakeholders, accord­ing to investigations, have become so powerful that they now constitute a clog in the wheel of progress while the relevant authorities that are meant to provide oversight functions to their activities have become helpless.

While Nigerians, includ­ing motorists, commuters and small business operators, are daily feeling the negative effect of fuel scarcity, the ca­bal are smiling to the banks to the detriment of these helpless citizens.

Those allegedly involved in this sharp practice include the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), depot owners, espe­cially private ones used by the Nigerian National Petro­leum Corporation (NNPC) for throughput arrangement, and the NNPC-owned de­pots.

At the moment, the “ca­bal” involved in the alleged unpatriotic act has set aside the current PPPRA pric­ing template for petroleum products released on April 1, 2016, and in its place have been using the pricing tem­plate for quarter one of 2016.

For instance, the current PPPRA pricing template for ex-depot collection price is N76.000 but hardly can any marketer get the product at that price, as they are paying as high as N120 per litre aside the N500,000 bribe given to security agents to facilitate the entry of their trucks.

On the other hand, NPA, rather than use the current template of N0.15k per litre for its charges, is sticking to the quarter one template of N0.36k per litre of petrol.

All these costs, according to marketers, add up to the high cost of petrol which they said would eventually be passed on to the consumers, a major reason petrol cannot be bought at the government approved pump price of N86 and N86.50k respectively.

President, National As­sociation of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Mr. Kas­sim Bitaya, at the weekend told Daily Sun that the cur­rent fuel scarcity being ex­perienced across the country was caused by the PPPRA.

Bitaya regretted that the PPPRA failed to invite stake­holders before it drew the current second quarter pric­ing template.

“I expected that the PPPRA should have called a stakeholders meeting like they did in the past before rolling out pricing templates. But rather, what we discov­ered was that they just rolled out the template without carrying the stakeholders along,” he said.

He explained that the pricing template was calcu­lated based on the official ex­change rate of N197, adding that no marketer had access to foreign exchange to bring in products at that rate, a de­velopment that resulted in many marketers jettisoning the idea of importation.

He stated that the pricing template as presently de­signed was faulty because some components ought not to be there in the first place while some need to be re­viewed either downward or upward.

But the Executive Secre­tary, Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers As­sociation (DAPPMA), Mr. Olufemi Adewole, said in a recent interview: “We don’t know who they are, so please help us expose them.