After 17 months’ probe, Reps panel fail to ascertain daily petrol consumption
The ad hoc committee set up by the House of Representatives to investigate and determine the actual volume of petrol consumed by Nigerians daily, said it was unable to ascertain the actual daily fuel consumption after a probe which took 17 months.
Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila had in January 2022 mandated the committee to probe the actual volume of petrol consumed daily, saying the federal government needed to first establish the daily consumption of the petroleum product before seeking an extension of the subsidy regime.
But the report of the ad-hoc committee which was considered and adopted by the House yesterday indicated that the committee could not ascertain the actual daily volume of fuel consumption because there was no available data to that effect.
Chairman of the committee, Abdulkadir Abdullahi while speaking on the report said, “there are simply no data to conclusively arrive at the daily consumption of PMS, in view of the fact, that records or information on the daily dispense at the various retail outlets/fuelling stations are not readily available.”
He said the committee was only able to ascertain the volume of petrol that was supplied but could not ascertain the actual volume that was actually dispensed by the various retail outlets as there were no records on that.
“Upon thorough scrutiny of the records of various stakeholders, it’s the considered opinion of the committee that the total volume of PMS supplied in the year 2022 is put at 24.3 billion litres or less, which is in tandem with the record of the NMDPRA; the daily average volume of PMS supplied in the year 2022 is put at 66.7 million litres or less.
The committee among others recommended a forensic audit of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPC) aimed at giving clarity to the Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP) programme and the consortia of DSDP operators with the view to unravelling the discrepancies in the importation and supply of premium motor spirit (PMS) commencing from 2015 to date.