Marketers Warn of Exacerbated Petrol Scarcity Despite Strike Suspension

Despite the suspension of the nationwide strike by the organised labour, marketers and other stakeholders in the downstream petroleum industry have advised the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to take strategic measures to create a backup initiative that will fast-track track distribution process as soon as possible.

The labour unions, yesterday call off their strike action for five days to give room for uninterrupted meetings with the tripartite committee on the new national minimum wage.

Labour leaders had a successful meeting with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation(SGF), George Akume and other government officials on Monday and resolved that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was committed to a new minimum wage higher than N60,000.

They equally resolved that the Tripartite Committee would meet every day for the next one week to arrive at an agreeable National Minimum Wage.

And yesterday, at a meeting with the federal government Tripartite Committee yesterday’s morning, the labour announced suspension of its strike. With this development, every government and private office are expected to reopen and function as usual.

Meanwhile, a few oil marketers who spoke to our Correspondent warned of possible scarcity and exacerbated distribution challenges to restore normalcy given infrastructure and logistics hiccups in the system.

At the moment, the loading of products has been suspended by NUPENG and this would affect marketers’ return on investment as many of them transact businesses through borrowed funds from banks.

“Our funds are tied down and we borrow with huge interest rates. The banks are more concerned with payments of borrowed money and we have paid for products as NNPCL do not give up products on credit and we need to sell and return to banks to be able to borrow more.” a marketer has revealed.

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria(IPMAN)’s former national president, Elder Chinedu Okoronkwo, said, ‘we are ready to operate our outlets but tanker drivers are not loading so we are stranded.’

Okoronkwo warned that, if the strike continues beyond Tuesday, the country will experience long queues; the type that happened last month because restoration of supply cannot be immediately achieved.

A major marketer, however, pointed out that the story is the same across the value chain, saying, “We are not operating. Tanker drivers have suspended loading so we are rationing supply we have and once it is exhausted we shut operations.”