Maikanti Baru, NNPC GMD inspects the petrol jerry cans at Kubwa Abuja
Two men, with 30 jerry cans of petrol have been arrested in Kubwa Abuja at the NNPC Super Mega Station by a monitoring team led by the Group Managing Director of the company, Maikanti Baru.
The men were arrested on Friday with with the jerrycans kept in their navy golf saloon car.
They have been handed over to the NSCDC for prosecution, the NNPC said as it also announced the clearing of queues at filling stations in Abuja and Lagos.
In a statement by spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu, the company promised to increase truck-outs to other states to restore normalcy to the petrol supply and distribution across the country.
“As far as truck out is concerned, we have more than doubled the number of trucks that are going out into the country. Yesterday, we loaded and distributed products from coastal and strategic inland depots like Jos. We loaded I,733 trucks yesterday and the actual normal number of trucks we required to keep the country wet is about 700 but we have been doing 800 to 850 trucks before the petrol scarcity. We have stepped up the number of truck-outs to 1,733 as a minimum and we have sustained this for a week and there will be more than enough products for motorists in the weeks ahead,” Dr. Baru said.
The NNPC helmsman said the Corporation would remain focused at ensuring that all the other state capitals are wet with petrol latest by Sunday.
Dr. Baru said that the petrol scarcity was self-inflicted following the sharp practices of some unscrupulous marketers who took to hoarding and diversion of the product.
“We have maintained our position that this scarcity is self-inflicted by marketers. The NNPC has more than 30 day sufficiency of supply of petroleum products, especially PMS and at the current consumption rate of about 27 to 28million litres per day, we should be very comfortable until the end of January 2018 even if we don’t import a drop of petrol into this country,” Dr. Baru reassured.
Dr. Baru appealed to marketers who have diverted petroleum products to please be mindful of their brothers and sisters and stop profiteering, stressing that they bought PMS at N133.28k per litre apart from their profit margin and a transportation cost of N7.20k per litre.
He urged the marketers to listen to the voice of reasoning to avoid the long arm of the law catching up with them, adding that the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) have been mandated to invoke the law against any defaulting marketers.
He appealed to motorists to cooperate with the NNPC in restoring normalcy to the petrol situation by reporting marketers who sell PMS above N145 per litre to the emergency lines of the DPR and NSCDC.
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