Petroleum marketers have warned that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has closed its portal for the purchase of Premium Motor Spirit (Petrol), preventing dealers from applying for the commodity.
Chinedu Ukadike, spokesperson for the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, revealed this in a statement on Wednesday.
He stated that there are over 2,000 pending tickets for the purchase of 45,000 liters of petrol by marketers.
Ukadike suggested that this situation could result in another fuel scarcity across the country.
I can’t confirm the price now because the portal is still shut down.
“We have more than 2,000 tickets for 45,000 liters (of petrol). That is 45,000 multiplied by 2,000, you can now know the number of million liters it will be. This is just an estimate, you know I don’t work with NNPCL and I don’t know what is on their system,” Ukadike stated.
He added that a 45,000-litre truckload of PMS is around N39.5 million, making N79 billion when multiplied by 2,000.
Reacting to the development, the spokesperson of NNPCL, Olufemi Soneye admitted that the state-owned firm has a significant backlog to address.
He said that the portal closure was intended to prevent the company from holding marketers’ funds for an extended period.
Soneye assured that the portal would soon be reopened; however, he failed to state the date when it would happen.
“We have a significant backlog to address. The closure is intended to prevent us from holding marketers’ funds for an extended period,” Soneye had explained.
“It will be reopened once the backlog has been sufficiently reduced. We are working to address it as soon as possible,” he stated.
