Fuel marketers have expressed concern over the continued ban on the supply of petroleum products in border communities across the country.
The National President of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Abubakar Maigandi, told The PUNCH in an exclusive interview that the ban has affected the businesses of its members in the border areas.
He noted that the government told IPMAN in 2019 that terrorists and bandits were getting fuel supplies through the filling stations along the national frontiers, aside from those diverting subsidised fuel to other countries, which spurred the ban.
The PUNCH recalls that former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration implemented a ban on the supply of petroleum products to border communities in 2019.
The directive, issued through the Nigeria Customs Service, prohibited filling stations within 20 kilometres of the borders from receiving or dispensing fuel and was aimed at curbing the illegal diversion of subsidised fuel to neighbouring countries by smugglers.
However, since the removal of the fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu in May 2023, Nigerians, including the National Assembly, have appealed that the ban be lifted, but the current administration has yet to do so.
The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Adewale Adeniyi, once said the NCS also held the belief that the ban ought to be lifted after subsidy removal, saying, however, that the policy was from the office of the National Security Adviser.
Meanwhile, oil marketers, whose businesses are being affected by the decision, said their pleas to the Federal Government had yet to get the needed attention.
The president of IPMAN disclosed that the marketers had lost their sources of livelihood as government policy ruined their investments.
“We are not happy about the policy. But the reason we didn’t talk much about it was when the government said they wanted to reduce insecurity in the country, and they were suspecting that was the means through which bandits get fuel. As a patriotic Nigerian, immediately you hear that, you have no option but to listen to the government.
“But at the end of the day, we realised that those marketers have to be allowed to sell fuel in their filling stations because already they have the licence and some of them have lost their businesses after losing huge amounts of money to construct filling stations,” Maigandi said.
He stated that the association had resumed discussions on the issue, telling the present government that marketers should be allowed to go back to their normal businesses.
“Our marketers are not happy, and we are seriously talking to the government on their behalf. We are in this together; we are all affected. They said some marketers are taking the product outside the country, but we realised that IPMAN members are not the ones smuggling fuel because we are not even getting the product, let alone taking it to another country.’’
“We are still talking about it. I will go and see the Minister of Defence. We have gone to the NSA and we still go back to him,” he added.
The Chairman of the Oil and Gas Traders Association in Ogun State, Surajudeen Bada, stated that the government’s ban on filling stations was a contradiction of their initial approval.
Bada reasoned, “Our members are suffering too much. One could not even imagine how people travel about 40km to get fuel. Our marketers in border areas are crying. They have complained to us; and we have made official representations, even up to the National Assembly.
“If the agencies supervising the borders do their work, a trailer is not a bicycle that will pass without them seeing it. The agencies should do their work to stop those smuggling fuels. That is the position of the association. A trailer is not an invisible item.”
SOURCE: PUNCHNG
