Nigerians may face another fuel scarcity in a week from now, as the Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners, NARTO, has announced that an ultimatum has been issued to the government over some unresolved issues affecting their operations.
NARTO , the umbrella body of all owners of the trucks and tankers used in supplying petroleum products from Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, depots to filling stations across the country, issued this statement through its national president , Kassim Bataiya.
He said it had earlier sent a letter to the Petroleum Equalization Fund, PEF since January 15 to warn them that it would boycott all its activities if the issues raised were not resolved within the next 10 days.
Mr. Bataiya declared that loading and transportation of petroleum products from tank farms and depots throughout the country would be affected once the protest begins.
He said NARTO had no other option but to issue the ultimatum over some of the challenges of its members, including the implementation of Project Aquila by the Board of the PEF.
Project Aquila is an electronic business solution introduced by the petroleum agency to help monitor the loading, transportation and delivery of petroleum products at all depots.
However, the association said it has come under intense pressure by its members to suspend its operations of distributing petroleum products all over the country pending when the issues involved in the project would be resolved.
“The implementation of Project Acquila has been bedevilled with various problems, which have been impeding the operations of NARTO as a vital stakeholder in the petroleum products distribution network in the country,” Mr. Bataiya said.
He also named some of the issues affecting their operations to include slow response from application of Aquila to up to three months; locations for fixing Aquila, which are few and far apart, leading to trucks travelling over 500 kilometers for that purpose.
The other problems he said were undue delay in freight payments, leading to cash flow problems for NARTO members and problematic transmission from old to new Aquila procedures.
“The response to the application of Aquila has been very slow taking up to three months in some cases, whereas bank loans amortisation does not wait,” the Association said in its letter to the PEF.
It also said some of its members’ entitlements have not been for several months on the excuse that Aquila does not capture already delivered products.
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