GLOBAL unions in the chemical, energy, and mine and other sectors, have thrown their weight behind the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, in its battle against perceived lack of transparency in the allocations of Petroleum products by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA.

NUPENG had Friday last week, issued a 14-day ultimatum to government to call a stakeholders’ forum to correct alleged lack of transparency and willful mis-allocation of products to marketers, failing which the union would embark on indefinite strike.

In a letter, under the umbrella of International Federation of Chemical, Energy, and Mine Workers’ Unions ICEM, a global unions Federation comprising 467 trade union affiliates in 132 countries including Nigeria, the Geneva, Switzerland-based ICEM, called for total support for NUPENG in its direct actions in Nigeria.

President of NUPENG, Comrade Achese Igwe, while announcing the ultimatum had said: “It remains a mystery as to which ministry or department of government the pricing authority reports to. The issue of transparency and accountability by the PPPRA is all-important in Nigeria with the country about to enact the Petroleum Industry Bill. The PPPRA board is constituted and represented by various bodies and the question is, what is the board doing?

I am a member of the board, but as I speak right now, how products are been allocated is not known to the board members because it is driven by few cabals in the Board and I say this should stop because when the issue of Third quarter allocation was done, I complained to the  executive secretary of the board to inquire about the allocation of the petroleum products to marketers. I do not know whether as a board member, I do not have the rights to ask questions. Some of these marketers given these quantities of allocations of petroleum products, do not have the capacity to store the products and some of them do not have any depot. So, how did they get these products and where did they store them? ”

“PPPRA pays huge sum of money to the banks for these portfolio marketers. Our position is that these billions of Naira paid as interest for delay payment of subsidy to the marketers should be used to rehabilitate our roads, to make our energy sector to work and to create jobs for citizens of this country.

But the money is  going into the hands of few individuals. Our demand is that the Board of PPPRA should be restructured and the right people should be given the opportunity to drive the board. If PPPRA has the responsibility in making sure of the availability of petroleum products, the right technocrats should be asked to go into the offices to take over and then, decisions takings in terms of allocating petroleum products should be an open issue for all Board members to know how these issues are being handled.

We do not have anything else to tell Nigerians than to say our demands is that PPPRA must publish the Q2, Q3, list of allocations of petroleum products to the marketers for Nigerians to know the individuals that the various allocations are being given for Nigerians to see.

This is the position of NUPENG. We are saying that allocation should be given to downstream sector that have the capacity to store and it should be given by the virtue of their capacities. We are also requesting that if that is the case PPPRA should be supervised by NNPC and the Ministry of petroleum on how allocations are being made by the Board.”