By Ishaya Ibrahim
Acting News Editor
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) depot in Aba, Abia State has become a den of crooks who make a kill from the fuel scarcity in the country, especially in the South East, investigation by TheNiche has revealed.
TheNiche finding is supported by a petition by one of the marketers at the depot who detailed the fraudulent activities that go on there.
“Today in Aba Depot, it has become fashionable to allocate products to either ladies for whatever reason or on the basis of how much a marketer is willing to pay,” the petition said.
The Aba depot has devised many ways of extorting money from marketers.
The officials are also accused of allocating the products to their female friends in exchange for sexual favours, many of whom have no filling stations, those interviewed by 
TheNiche have said.
TheNiche have said. The marketers say they are compelled to pay a certain amount of money to collect Authority to Pay (ATP) slip. They are also mandated to pay another fee before a meter ticket is raised. This is for the lucky ones who have been listed to receive allocation. For many others, their names never get to make the list despite a detailed rolling programme that is designed to accommodate the over one thousand marketers on daily basis.
“Rather than follow this noble route to products’ allocation and distribution which everybody acknowledged would give every marketer a chance to load either of the three products at intervals, the sales department has taken the disgraceful path of handing out these products to ladies in exchange for sex, and at cut-throat conditions to few agents and marketers ready to go along with them,” the petition said.
They recalled that in December, the NNPC pushed PremiumMotor Spirit (PMS) to Aba depot to help ease the scarcity and save Nigerians the trauma they were going through. That the sales department of the depot abandoned the rolling programme and preferred to give out the product to those who were ready to pay between seven hundred thousand to one million naira.
“If after paying the approved N133.28 for 30,000 liters of PMS and a marketer is compelled to pay an additional one million naira bribe before he is allowed to load (which translates to additional N33.33 for every liter), would it be morally right to expect that marketer to take the product to his station and still dispense at the approved pump price of N145.00 per liter?,” they queried.
Paul Osu, spokesman for the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) said he was unaware of the fraudulent practices of the Aba depot, hence, won’t be able to react appropriately.
He referred our correspondent to the controller of the Umuahia depot in Abia State. But we were unable to get him at the time of filing the report.
During the last Christmas and New Year holidays, TheNiche discovered that a litre of PMS in many parts of the South East were sold between N250 and N300 with the marketers complaining bitterly they were buying the products at cut-throat prices from the depot.
Almost all the filling stations also complained that it took them several days and occasionally weeks to lift the product from the product, a situation they had no choice than to pass the burden on the consumers.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
