Operatives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, surveillance team on petroleum products monitoring set up by the Inspector General of Police, Ibraheem Idris, have intercepted a truck loaded with 40,000 litres of PMS.
The Head Downstream of the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, Kaduna zone, Yahaya Maishera, told newsmen that the surveillance team intercepted the truck along the Funtua-Gusau road in Katsina state, while on its way to neighbouring Zamfara state.
According to him, the products, from a depot in Lagos were meant to be supplied in Gombe state as part of efforts to cushion the effect of the scarcity, but were rather diverted to Zamfara state by suspected independent marketers.
To serve as a deterrent to other unscrupulous marketers, the DPR therefore ordered that the tanker be brought back from Futua to Kaduna.
It also ordered that the product be discharged at an NNPC mega station in Mando area of the state capital, where it would be sold to the public at the government approved pump price of N145 per litre.
This is coming weeks after the DPR raised an alarm that petroleum products were being diverted by independent marketers to unknown filling stations, making it difficult to end the petrol scarcity, the worst that the nation has experienced in a many years.
Amidst the lingering scarcity across the country, the DPR and PPMC have reassured residents of Kaduna and other states in the north that they would intensify surveillance on supply and sale of products to ensure that the scarcity is brought to an end as soon as possible.
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