25th February, 2015
Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt
Consumers of petroleum products in Rivers state and environs will continue to increase above the official pump price of petroleum products of N87 per litre pending the intervention of the federal government, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association (IPMAN) warned today.
In Rivers petrol now sells for between N90 to N130 and that will not change Comrade Sunny Nkpe, the Chairman of IPMAN Port Harcourt zone has said. He explained that the reason for sudden emergence of long queues in Port Harcourt, the state capital and environs was because the private depot owners have increased their prices per litre.
He said that a situation where private depot owners unilaterally jack up the pump price to N90 per litre and above to members of IPMAN, as business men they are compelled to increase their pump price to make profit.
IPMAN said that while it appreciates recent reduction in the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) by the federal government, it enjoined the federal government to prevail on Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, to do what is needful and investigate the activities the private depot owners who have arbitrarily increased the price of fuel.
Nkpe also revealed that besides the increase in pump price, the scarcity of petroleum products has been made worse by fact that some marketers have decided to stay off the road due the alleged “harassment and intimidation” of members by security agencies, especially National Security Civil Defence Corps.
He confirmed that his members have boycotted Imo state due to a similar problem and also because of illegal levies and taxes imposed on them.
PM News findings show that the depots around in the state capital sell petrol for N90 and above to marketers. They then add N2.85k as transport cost per litre to convey it to their stations.
Consequently, none of the marketers would sell at the N87 officially approved price.
Our correspondent gathered that to sell at N87, stations will have to tamper with their meters. The sharp practice is however easily noticeable when a customer buys in jerry cans and at N87 compared to what is displayed as meter price.
Ironically, Rivers is the hub of hydrocarbon in Nigeria and host to two refineries-Port Harcourt refineries all in Eleme, Eleme local Government area of the state.