Motorists queue for fuel in Lagos
Speaking at a press conference in Kaduna yesterday, Kenneth
Nwachukwu, the National Secretary of the Association of Mega Filling
Station Owners of Nigeria (AMFSON), has said that its members are ready
to name those behind the lingering fuel scarcity if only they mention it
directly to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe
Kachikwu, and he promises to guarantee their safety afterwards.
The AMFSON also alleged that several trucks of fuel had been
diverted into black markets by the perceived saboteurs at the detriment
of mega stations owners and Nigerians in general, adding that the
inability of their members to access their fuel papers several months
after depositing millions of naira for supply had contributed immensely
to the current fuel crisis.
He pointed out that it was to avoid something like fuel scarcity
that the immediate past government established mega affiliate stations
in order to cushion its negative effect on Nigerians.
According to Nwachukwu, even with AMFSON, the situation persisted unabated, saying, 'the
minister, who is also the Group Managing Director should address the
plight of our members to help in ending the fuel crisis.'
He said, "The minister said we should mention names, but you
know Nigerians, when you come out in public to mention names of the
saboteurs, they can go after you, so it is something that if it is
possible to do one on one with the minister and assure of our safety, we
can tell him, there is nothing to be feared because we have evidence of
how fuel is being diverted into the black markets.
"We have evidence of everything we are saying about this fuel
crisis. The minister said we should mention names that if we mention
names, the person will not last 24 hours. But it is not proper to
mention names in public, we are giving information, it is left for the
minister to go underground and work on the information and get to the
root of what we are saying.
"This is corruption in the highest order. We are now crying
out, we met twice with the minister and we told him that NNPC retail
staff have refused to bring us into the mainstream of fuel distribution.
But they can’t be the accused and the judges at the same time.
Sometimes it is our names they use in bringing out that product, but it
never got to us.
"When we met the minister for the first time, around October
last year, we discovered that the NNPC Retail staff deceived him to
embark on building new 800 filling stations, but it does not make sense
to build 800 stations when the old ones on ground have not been
serviced.
"So when we met him, we told him about our own plight, that
these staff believe that NNPC Retail belongs to them, and not to the
Nigerian people, they believe it is their birth right, these are staff
that are earning salaries.
"We told the minister of our problem that these staff refused
to work with us as an association, they prefer to work with us on
individual basis, so that if you are dying as an individual, you can’t
talk, and if you talk, they drive you out of the business."
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