Okechukwu Nnodim and ’Femi Asu
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Sunday announced that it was spending N774m daily (about N23.99bn monthly) as subsidy on the 50 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit consumed across the country.
Although it described the amount as under-recovery, the oil firm stated that the amount was due to the proliferation of filling stations in communities with international land and coastal borders across the country.
The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Maikanti Baru, said the multiplication of filling stations had energised unprecedented cross-border smuggling of petrol to neighbouring countries, making it difficult to sanitise the fuel supply and distribution matrix in Nigeria.
Baru disclosed this when he led a management team of the corporation on a visit to the Comptroller-General, Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (retd.), according to a statement issued on Sunday by the firm’s Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Ndu Ughamadu.
Baru stated that a detailed study conducted by the NNPC indicated strong correlation between the presence of the frontier stations and the activities of fuel smuggling syndicates.
He said the activities of the smugglers led to the recent abnormal surge in the evacuation of petrol from less than 35 million litres per day to more than 60 million litres per day, which was in sharp contrast with established national consumption pattern.
Providing a detailed presentation of the findings, the NNPC boss noted that 16 states, having among them 61 local government areas with border communities, accounted for 2,201 registered fuel stations.
He stated that the tanks of the facilities had a combined capacity of 144,998,700 litres of petrol.Read full story.
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