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Marketers protest fuel shortage in South-East
NDIDI OKAFOR,
Abuja
SOUTH-EAST
chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), yesterday led fuel marketers to
the office of the Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, to protest what it called
the deliberate "short supply of fuel to the zone".
This happened as the Senate started moves
to scrap the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
Leader of the protesting group, Mr. Lucky
Akabuike, told the Senate leadership that the attempt of the NLC in the zone to
get marketers to comply with court ruling and sell at the agreed N40 for litre
failed because of the said deliberate policy of the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) to always reduce the quantity of the fuel for the entire
zone.
Reeling out the statistics of the quantity
of fuel supplied, across the country daily, Mr. Akabuike said "out of the 21
depots in the country, only Aba and Enugu load less than 35,000 litres per
truck".
"We are also not allowed bridging, that is
load from any other depot as other zones do. For the South-East zone, "bridging"
is forbidden by the authorities," he said.
He lamented that Aba alone has 800
marketers and yet was not allowed to load the required supply thus contributing
to about N70 per litre of fuel in the South East zone.
He appealed to Wabara to intervene and
ensure that the zone gets enough supply since it also has two of its states,
Abia and Imo as the oil producing states.
Sympathising with the delegation, Senate
Chief Whip, Victor Oyofo, wanted to know the NNPC’s position on the matter,
saying it would help the Senate intervene effectively.
But Akabuike said several complaints from
the zone to the NNPC in the past fell on deaf ears.
Pledging to take up the matter, Wabara
said in an emotion-laden voice, "I am pained. How can you have breast milk in
abundance and you are being given cow milk? My state, is one of the
oil-producing states in Nigeria and we don’t have fuel. I am greatly pained that
my people and my zone is being marginalised".
Meanwhile, the Senate has formally started
moves to scrap the DPR to replace it with the Petroleum Inspectorate Commission
(PIC).
A bill to that effect, sponsored by
Senator David Brigidi went through second reading at the plenary session
yesterday and was referred to the Senate Committee on Petroleum (upstream) for
detailed scrutiny.
Before this, Senators Victor Oyofo, Chris Adihije, Isaiah
Ballat and Abdul Azeez Ibrahim supported it and asked for its speedy passage.
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