This revelation was made by the National Vice President of IPMAN, Hammed Fashola.
The price of petroleum per litre in Nigeria has continued on its high side as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has agreed to sell Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) to members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria at N995 per litre, according to reports.
This revelation was made by the National Vice President of IPMAN, Hammed Fashola.
Fashola noted that this was made possible through the "intervention" of the Department of State Services (DSS), PUNCH report.
“We really appreciate their intervention. They are doing their job. Anywhere they have seen that there may be a crisis, it is their duty to intervene. And their intervention brokered peace and understanding between the parties, and everybody agreed to work together,” Fashola stated.
"For now, tentatively, I think they are offering us N995 per litre.”
He however noted that despite the N995 per litre sales, the cost of transportation may increase the value of each litre of petroleum on the longer run.
“Depends on the location. I think with the N995, there will be a little reduction. Don’t forget that if you transport a product from Lagos to a far distance, you will pay for transportation and other charges.”
“We want to work on that because we want to have a common ground. When we sit down and look at the price analysis offered to us, and factor in all our expenses, we want to have a uniform price as much as possible.”
“So, I will not be able to tell you the exact price now, but we are working on it, especially in the Lagos axis and other zones. We will look at the transportation cost and all that. At the end of the day, we will fix the price for ourselves,” he stated.
According to him, marketers had suffered from price disparity before now, but that would change with the new development around Dangote.
“The price disparity has been a disadvantage between us and the NNPC Retail and major marketers. So, we are trying to look at how to close that gap so that we come back fully into the business. The lack of direct supply has been our problem, and now that we are solving that problem, I don’t think that disparity will be there again,” he stressed.
“The queues you see are because of that difference in prices, that’s why people are saying there are queues. There are no queues; it is the price disparity that is causing the queues. So, if there is not much difference, we have filling stations everywhere; just drive in, buy fuel, and go. But that so much difference in the price is creating that scenario of queues,” he narrated.
There has been controversies around the pricing of petroleum especially as with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited as the sole distributor.
Petroleum marketers had argued that they were not carried along in respect to how much petroleum costs per litre from Dangote refinery before now.