BY MICHAEL EBOH, KUNLE KALEJAYE, CHRIS OCHAYI, AMAMDI ONYEGADUE, EDIRI EJOH & GRACE UDOFIA

Nigerians continue to feel the pains of the lingering fuel scarcity, even as more vessels carrying Premium Motor Spirits, PMS, arrived the country yesterday.

Also, the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, said it had reinforced its monitoring of filling stations to curb hoarding and diversion of the product by marketers.

A source at the Apapa depot said MT Centurion, a vessel belonging to NIPCO Plc berthed at the Apapa port, with 26 million metric tons of PMS.

The source also stated that another vessel belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, discharged 15 million metric tons of PMS in Apapa.

The source said: “NIPCO’s vessel, MT Centurion is currently discharging 26 million metric tons of fuel in Apapa , while another NNPC vessel is also discharging 15 million metric tons of fuel.”

On its part, DPR said it had reinforced its monitoring of filling stations to curb hoarding and diversion of the product by marketers.

The agency said also that it was collaborating with Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC and Abuja Environmental Protection Agency, AEPA, to raid fuel hawkers and black marketers and restore sanity to the country.

DPR’s Zonal Operation Controller, in charge of Kogi, Nassarawa, Niger and Plateau states as well as FCT, Mr. Aliyu Haladu, who disclosed this at an interactive session with newsmen in Abuja, reiterated the commitment of the agency to strictly enforce monitoring to ensure that the product was available for motorists.

Haladu, who explained that its responsibility does not cover loading of fuel at the depot, said it only embarks on product monitoring once the product leaves the depot, where it conducts checks and balances of what is supplied to the filling stations.

The Controller used the occasion to dissociate himself and the agency from media reports credited to him that “scarcity is as a result of delay in signing of contracts for importation of petroleum products and illegal bunkering,” among others.

He said the publication which quoted him as making the above statement, where he represented DPR at the budget defence in the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources Upstream, was untrue.

According to him, “to put the records straight, the issue of renewal of contracts for the importation of petroleum products was never discussed in the meeting.

“The issue of bunkering only came up when the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Upstream suggested that DPR could collect more revenue on behalf of the Federal Government if bunkering is resuscitated.”