(Tribune / Nigeria) — Following the longest fuel scarcity which has remained unresolved for months now, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has urged the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the oil sector.
Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, the president of PENGASSAN, Comrade Francis Johnson, argued that the solution to the incessant acute fuel scarcity is not reliance on importation of refined petroleum products which has defied such solutions but building of domestic refining capacity to cater for the domestic market.
According to him, “issues like pipeline vandalism, Joint Ventures (JV) cash call, corruption, state of the refineries and others should be addressed. The solution to the problem on ground is not importation. Today, they imported 50 cargoes, tomorrow they import more. If they keep importing, the situation will keep coming back. There are serious issues like corruption, vandalism, JV cash call, state of the refineries and others which the FG should declare a state of emergency on,” he said.
Johnson said there should be a dialogue on how to remedy the problems.
When asked how he felt about the return of subsidy by the Federal Government, he argued that it will not solve the challenges.
“We have to sit at a round table and talk. It is just that we don’t want any trouble because if we talk, Nigerians will ask us to apologise for saying this and that. All what the Federal Government is doing now is not the solution,” he said.
The Federal Government had reintroduced subsidy, which is put at N5.84 per litre. Petroleum marketers were given over 58 per cent of the second quarter import allocation of petroleum products as against a paltry of 12 per cent allocated to them in the first quarter.
According to the statement, by the Acting Executive Secretary of Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the Expected Open Market Price of petrol for marketers is now N92.34 per litre, against an official pump price of N86.5 per litre, leaving N5.84 as subsidy per litre.
The pricing template for NNPC retail stations showed that the government was paying N5.80 per litre as subsidy, as the EOMP for NNPC stations was N91.80 per litre as against an official rate of N86 per litre.
