New pump price: Petroleum marketers stick to old price

Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt

Four days into the New year of 2016, after the Federal Government started enforcing the new pump price of N86 and N86.50 per litre for premium motor spirit, PMS, popularly called petrol, owners of filling stations in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State Capital, have refused to comply.

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) had announced that petrol sholud be sold for N86 and N86.50 from 1 January, 2016.
Some Nigerians hailed the decision but their joy was shortlived as petrol stations visited by our correspondent in the state capital and its environs showed that they were selling between N130 to N145 pump price per litre.

A visit to some petrol stations owned by independent marketers such as Silverloop, Unity, and Parflox located along Chief Godspower Make road, off Eliozu axis in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area, a suburb of Port Harcourt on Monday showed that none of them have adjusted to the new pump prices.

Similarly, at Amanda Petrol station in Rukpokwu the pump price was N130, while major marketers such as Total, Mobil, Forte Oil and two NNPC mega stations in Rumuodamaya, headquarters of Obio-Akpor local Government, were under lock and key.

A taxi cab driver, Tunde Makinde, who plies Rukpokwu and Airforce bus stop, lamented that despite the reduction in the pump price of petrol, marketers in Port Harcourt have refused to adjust to the new price, insisting that the stock they were dispensing were old stocks they bought last year.

Makinde stated that the high cost of the fuel for his car was adversely affecting his daily returns as he spends much of his daily earnings on petrol.

Another motorist queried why the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC, could not enforce the new prices.

Comrade Chika Onuegbu,the Rivers State branch Chairman of Trade Union Congress, TUC, has lashed out at the monitoring and enforcement agencies such as the DPR and the Rivers State Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources for abandoning the consumers of petroleum products in the state to the greedy marketers.

“The Rivers State Government is not doing enough in the area of monitoring of the sale of petroleum products in the state, leaving their duty of care for the citizens of the state to be exploited by petroleum products marketers

“The DPR is also not doing enough. We don’t want a situation where few greedy marketers hold the people of the state to ransom. They should start doing their job by sanctioning petrol stations flouting the orders of the Federal Government for reduction of pump price of petrol in state,” Onuegbu said.