- Over 9m Litres Of Petrol Diverted In 3months
By Nse Anthony-Uko
ABUJA, (Sundiata Post) — The Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, on Wednesday, said it fined an unscrupulous oil marketing company, A.Y. Maikifi, based in Kano the sum of N1.2 billion for diverting 115 truckloads of the products.
The agency also stated that about 162 truckloads of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as petrol, an equivalent of about nine million litres was diverted from their original destination service stations across Nigeria between December 2017 and February 2018.
The diversion of products, according DPR was imported by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as intervention thereby worsening the lingering fuel crisis currently ravaging the country.
Speaking after a meeting of all its controllers with its Director, Mr. Mordecai Ladan, in Abuja on Wednesday, Head, Public Affairs Unit, DPR Abuja Zone, Mr. Mohammed Saidu, stated that the DPR uncovered these massive diversion of products as a result of the activities of the Special Intelligence Unit (SPU), it recently created to intensify surveillance.
According to him, through the SPU, the DPR received report that largely some of the diverted products do not appear on the manifest.
“The SPU go about to give us report, in fact they work day and night. About 162 trucks slightly above nine million litres have been discovered to be diverted between January and February.
“These give DPR a lot of concerns and that was why DPR gathered all the controllers across the country to make sure they further strategize and given clear cut directives as to how they should go about uncovering these sharp practices.”
Saidu further explained that the Kano NNPC depot ranked highest in terms of diversion of products at the peak of the crisis.
According to him, the 115 truckloads of the products that was diverted were specifically meant for intervention but never got to any station because the station the marketer claimed to be taking the truck was a non-existing station.
“Our intelligence unit visited there and discovered that the land was not even cleared let alone a filling station existing there,” he stated.
DPR, he said called for a meeting of all the operations controllers across the country to enable each of them replicate the intelligence unit in their various zones.
“The concern is that these products were not in the manifest. Were it not for the intelligence unit there is no way DPR would have known such product exist let alone tract,” he noted.
Saidu explained that all the marketers that had been found culpable had been fine N275 per litre of the product diverted, stating that for instance.
Commenting on A.Y. Maikifi and other defaulters efforts to pay the fines he said, “He must pay because he could not account for the product. There are smaller marketers that have since commenced payment of their own. We have realized over N12 million from marketers who have come forward to accept they have diverted and are willing to pay the fine. Some have paid up to 50 per cent while some are still pleading but until they finished payment DPR will not lift the fine.”
Speaking further, he said, “What happened was that during this period when NNPC gives its intervention products, DPR is not involved. Intervention products are products that are given to marketers to take to certain locations to beef up supply. But we were surprised that these products were taken to difficult location where they think DPR cannot locate.
“But our special intelligence unit went as far those areas to discover that the products meant for intervention did not only go there but the filling stations never existed. They saw a flat land that was not cleared,” he stated.