BY Clara Nwachukwu

Despite being informed about the unethical activities of some of their retail outlets, the franchise owners of AP, now, Forte Oil, Conoil and MRS, have done nothing with regard to their outlets selling petrol at N105/litre, rather than the approved N97/L.

This comes on the heels of the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, forcing defaulting outlets to make undertakings of being shut down for six months if found guilty again of over-pricing and under-dispensing .

For weeks, these outlets, which have continued to dupe motorists with additional N8 on every litre of petrol purchased from them, also indulge in under-dispensing. Thus, motorists end up paying more for less.

On the display boards and dispensing pumps, these outlets, particularly those located around the old and new Lagos-Abeokuta expressways, notably, Iyana Ipaja, Agege, Abule Egba, Ijaye, Alagbado and beyond, fraudulently display N97/L, but quietly inform motorists that the cost is N105/L.

The surprising thing about this illegality is the fact that these outlets all belong to the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, MOMAN, which pride itself on greater control on its members.

The situation is even more riotous with the independents, which are largely considered to be too big to be controlled because of their size. Some of these independent outlets sell at even N120/L depending on the area and the period of the day.

AP, one of the filling stations selling above the pump price

‘Motorists are desperate’
Defending its slow pace of enforcement of compliance to the pump price, the DPR blamed motorists for being too desperate to insist on their right of not be cheated.

A top official of the industry regulator who spoke with Vanguard in confidence on the telephone, said, “We also need to help ourselves, because even if we (DPR) are slow because of man power constraints, motorists should not succumb to being cheated because they are desperate to get fuel.”

The source disclosed that in the course of its routine checks on Saturday, more than 15 outlets were sealed in the Ikorodu area of Lagos for similar offences, but did not identify which outlets.

According to him, “We have continued to go round the outlets, and we have continued to seal some stations. The fact that we have not gone to some areas does not mean we are not doing anything; we are.

“The problem is that most of them are repeated offenders and we now ask them to make undertakings that if they are caught again, they will be shut down for six months, and we have begun to do that as well.”

However, the DPR source noted that shutting down the outlets may also compound the situation in the short term, in view of the current scarcity. But he said the situation can be salvaged if more people gave us information about the outlets and their locations.”

But some of these outlets have also devised other means of beating the industry regulator to the game by hoarding the fuel, and selling only at night, to escape scrutiny.