Association wants more petroleum products allocated to South East states

The Association of Imo State Petroleum Marketers has appealed to the NNPC to allocate more petrol to the states in the South-east under its `special petroleum intervention quota’.

Chief Christopher Amadi, the Chairman of the association, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Owerri on Monday.

Amadi also said that the low allocation to Imo was also applicable to other states in the South-east like Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi and Anambra, stressing that the poor allocation had compounded petrol scarcity in the zone.

“While other states receive more than 10 million litres under the NNPC petrol intervention, no state in the South-east gets above one to two million litres.

“This low allocation is reason why petrol scarcity in the area seems to be different’’, he said.

“if NNPC increases quantity of petrol to Imo and other states in the south-east, marketers will sell at government controlled price.’’

Amadi appealed to the governors in South-east to assist petroleum marketers by looking into the low allocation of petrol to states in the zone.

NAN reports that most filling stations in Imo sell a litre of petrol at between N130 and N150 contrary the official pump price of N86.50.

Amadi said that marketers were experiencing difficulties in sourcing products, adding that “we only source products from private tank farms in Lagos, Calabar and Port Harcourt at relatively high prices”.

He said that due to the distance and relatively high rate marketers sourced products, they could not afford to sell at N86.50 per litre.

Amadi called on the Federal Government to step up efforts at reactivating all the local refineries.

“This current situation whereby Nigerians almost depend on private tank farms for supply of petroleum products is bad.’’

“I also appeal to NNPC to reactivate the NNPC depots in Aba, Enugu and Makurdi as well as construct a depot to serve Imo State.

“Population of Imo State alone has doubled what it was when NNPC depot in Aba was constructed to serve the old Imo State,” he said.