A source said yesterday that they had decided to woo the APC leaders in the face of the seeming reluctance of the outgoing Jonathan administration to settle the Federal Government’s indebtedness to fuel marketers as a way of ending the crippling nationwide product shortage.
The courting of the APC came on day the importer said they could not guarantee that the ongoing fuel scarcity would end before the expiration of this government on May 29. The Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) and the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association (DAPPMA), which stated this at a joint press conference in Lagos, alleged that the “insensitive approach” of the outgoing government to sufferings caused by the ongoing scarcity was likely to make the incoming government to inherit the crisis.“We are beginning to lose hope in the outgoing government and, as I speak, we are talking to very top politicians in the opposition party,” the source said without giving more details. Executive Secretary of MOMAN, Mr. Thomas Obafemi Olawore and his DAPPMA counterpart, Mr. Olufemi Adewole, however, told reporters in Lagos that government officials have continued to shun meetings and requests for measures to end the scarcity through payment of the debts. Olawore said the marketers, whose businesses and accounts had been rendered insolvent by the debts, were ready to approach the incoming government.
“If they don’t pay, we will approach the new government,” he said, adding that part of the purpose the media briefing is “to put things on the table for them to see and understand.” Asked when the fuel scarcity caused by the halt in fuel importation by marketers would end, Olawore said: “Scarcity will disappear only if there is payment and it is this payment that makes banks to guarantee us loan and it is this that will guarantee importation of product.
“For the past two weeks when this scarcity has started, nobody in government has spoken to us and we believe that if they are sensitive to the plight of Nigerians, they would have called us. In fact, we were the one that demanded for the last meeting we had with them. “It is hard to determine when the scarcity will disappear because we have not been able to get our money; because our suppliers no longer believe in us.
We are unable to import products and it is the small quantity from the NNPC that everybody is scrambling for in Apapa.” On the claim by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that it has 1.2 billion litres of petrol in stock; the MOMAN secretary said Nigerians should query the claim. “Anybody that tells you that there is 1.2 billion litres somewhere, ask the person that where is the stock.
What they are telling us is that they have about 300 ships somewhere,” he said. Adewole also called on the Federal Government to fulfill its contractual obligations to the fuel marketers. He said: “We are still appealing to the Federal Government to pay our members. The debt is over N200 billion based on debts profile of N200 billion as at February this year.
“This means that between that time and now, the amount must have risen.” He added that the silence of the Federal Government was a ploy to delay payment. “The government has not called us for talks since about two weeks that we stopped importation and we believe that this is a ploy to delay payment,” he said.
-New Telegraph
