Oil marketers have said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited portal used to purchase petrol has been shut against dealers, making it impossible for them to apply for the commodity purchase.
They said marketers are still awaiting over 90 million litres of petrol from the state-owned company. This is valued at about N79bn.
The PUNCH recalls that amid marketers’ complaints over their inability to order petrol, the NNPC confirmed the shutdown of its purchasing portal to our correspondent last month, giving its reasons.
According to NNPC spokesperson, Olufemi Soneye, the company shut the portal due to a significant backlog.
Soneye explained that the shutdown became necessary to stop NNPC from holding marketers’ capital for too long.
“We have a significant backlog to address. The closure is intended to prevent us from holding marketers’ funds for an extended period,” Soneye had explained.
He, however, assured marketers that the portal would be reopened after the backlog had been reduced.
“It will be reopened once the backlog has been sufficiently reduced. We are working to address it as soon as possible,” he told our correspondent.
Marketers who spoke with our correspondent confirmed that NNPC was expediting actions to clear the backlogs as of the weekend.
Though NNPC did not disclose the value of the ‘huge backlogs’, independent marketers said they have over 2,000 tickets yet to be cleared with NNPC.
In an interview, the National Publicity Secretary of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chinedu Ukadike, said the association is still waiting for the portal’s opening.
“They are on it, our marketers are still loading petrol from the NNPC. I can’t confirm the price now because the portal is still shut down.
“We have more than 2,000 tickets for 45,000 litres (of petrol). That is 45,000 multiplied by 2,000, you can now know the number of million litres it will be. This is just an estimate, you know I don’t work with NNPC and I don’t know what is on their system,” Ukadike stated.
He disclosed that a 45,000-litre truckload of PMS is around N39.5m, making N79bn when multiplied by 2,000.
(Punch)
