… Task force raids stations as scarcity persists in Kaduna, Kano, others

Following the continued scarcity of petrol across the country, a Joint Task Force Team, comprising of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Department of State Security (DSS), and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corpse (NSCDC) has raided erring filling stations along the Kaduna-Zaria express way where they dispensed liters of fuel realised at the stations to motorists at control price.

The fuel scarcity has continued in many parts of the country including Kano, Zaria, Kaduna, Kebbi, Maiduguri, Yola, Taraba and Yobe as of yesterday.

Reports from most major cities in the above mentioned states said the petrol was sold above N200/ litre and very few stations were selling at the government approved price of N145/ litre.

The task force which visited three filling stations including Mamu Oil, FARMSKAN Petroleum Nigeria Limited and FASADA Petroleum Company discovered that the stations had large quantities of petrol in their reservoirs but they were not selling.

Our correspondent reports that a mild drama occurred at FASADA Petroleum Company at Dogarawa, along Zaria-Kaduna express way when the Manager of the station upon sighting the task force, in an attempt to re-adjust the pump price from his dispenser from N215 back price to control price of N145, ended up adjusting below controlled price.

“I got scared, but there is nothing I can do than to sell it like that, at least I have not been caught in the act,” Balarabe Zaria the manager said.

The task force dispensed the 4,500 litres of petrol discovered at FARMSKAN and the 3, 800 liters at MAMU filling station to motorists who trailed vehicles of the task force to various filling stations hoping to take advantage of the raid and sales of the sacrce product at government price.

Leader of the Task Force and the Zonal Operations Controller of DPR, Kaduna Zone, Tafida Isah said FARMSKAN filling stations will be suspended for three months.

A commercial driver, Nuhu Yakubu said, “These filling stations, as soon as you (the task force) leave, they revert to black market rate of even above N250 per liter and they under dispense to even five liters at 10 litres. So it is as bad as that. The only long term solution is to make this product available.”

Another resident, Zainab Biu called on the government to spread the task force to cover all the nooks and crannies of the state saying, “I have been on queues in five filling station including this (FASADA) for four days now, and they kept telling us no fuel not knowing that, they sell to black marketers in the night.”

Executive Director Operations, KRPC, Abba Bukar who led the NNPC team, while speaking with journalists said the Crude Distillation Unit is back on stream and is currently operating at 60 percent production capacity.