By Linus Aleke, Abuja
The National Oil and Gas Suppliers Association of Nigeria (NOGASA), on Wednesday, appealed to Federal Government (FG), to pay marketers their outstanding claims through the Petroleum Equalization Fund (PEF), which will enable them remain in business, following the sudden removal of petroleum subsidy by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu led administration.
The National President of the association, Mr. Bennett Korie, made this appeal, while addressing energy correspondent in Abuja.
This is even as he tasked the incumbent administration to revitalize Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries, stressing that over reliance on Dangote refinery that is yet to come on stream will smell doom for Nigeria.
He said: “I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the government to please pay marketers their petroleum equalization claims, so that we will continue to be in business. If it is not paid, we would not get fuel to sell. Subsidy or no subsidy, it is important for Nigerians to know that marketers do not have this money to pay, even though we support the removal, we have no choice, because there is every need to pay this PEF, very very important”.
Mr. Korie, said that subsidy was removed without considering some of these problems, stressing that “before now, we have this PEF, and the marketers had paid the transporters. The money is there, but now, the government is not paying the marketers. Alas, there is no money, where do we get the money?”.
The President, said that his association supports subsidy removal 100 percent.
He however, regretted that everybody is talking about subsidy removal but don’t talk about the problem behind the subsidy removal.
According to him, “It is good good to remove subsidy but there are things that people don’t know. For instance; some of the marketers don’t have the money to pay differentials. This is because in less than an hour that Mr. President announced the removal of subsidy, the price changed, and that affected a lot of marketers, we are talking about millions of naira.
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“Before the removal, a tanker of fuel was selling for about N7 million, but in less than an hour, it went up to N25 million, where is the money? As we speak, marketers are not happy in Port Harcourt and Warri. There are crisis there, they are not happy. Where are they going to get this money from? Again, the banks are giving loans at 28 to 30 percent interest rate, so where is this money going to come from? That is a fresh problem and no body is talking about it,” he said.
The President counseled the government not to just hope only on Dangote refinery, but also revitalize Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries.
He said that the marketers are also feeling the impact of the high price, and not just Nigerians, nothing that it cost money to run this business.
He said that if nothing is done, a lot of marketers will be out of business.
When asked how much government is owing the association on the PEF claim, he said: “The PEF fund is there, the down stream controller knows how much they are owing us. I can not give you the figure now, but they know it”.
He concluded that “we are talking about three mouths, let us be fair to each other, how do we recover the interest. If refineries are good the price will go down”.
