According to the Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of
Nigeria (IPMAN), Sunny Nkpe, Nigeria is constantly plagued with
fuel crises because it’s not using its refineries.
Nkpe disclosed this on
Monday, May 25, 2015, during a telephone interview with Pulse.
The IPMAN Chairman stated
further that Nigeria’s refineries can produce 50-60% of the fuel the country
needs but they’ve been shut down for more than a year.
“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 said.
An industry insider, who
chose to remain anonymous, told Pulse that the relevant government agencies
refuse 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 from it, by the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The current scarcity is
said to be an artificial creation of the marketers in attempts to force the
government to pay the remaining subsidy debt it owes them before a new
administration is inaugurated on May 29, 2015.
Meanwhile, the marketers
have called of their strike and are expected to begin supplying product
nationwide to end the scarcity.
However, until the real
problems causing the scarcity are resolved, Nigerians are left asking how long
it will be before the next crisis occurs.
- Pulse
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