The National Union of Road Transport Worker (NURTW), Abdulsalam Motor Parks, Minna, Niger State, has advocated the setting up of mobile courts to prosecute “black marketers’’ to serve as deterrent to hoarders.
The union’s Vice Chairman, Alhaji Abdullahi Na’ura, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Minna.
He advised the government and all relevant agencies to investigate the sources of supply of the products to black marketers and make them face similar sanctions to address the continued artificial scarcity of the product.
Na’ura said that in Minna, many attendants at fuel stations had their agents in strategic locations in and outside the state capital to supply them with the products.
“While motorists spend nights at filling stations, attendants are seen diverting the products to black marketers.”
He lamented that petrol was now being sold for between N190 and N200 per litre in Minna, depending on the location of the station.
The chairman, however, commended, the Niger Command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps for setting up a task force to monitor the sale and distribution of petroleum products in the state.
“But the task force officers can’t be at the filling stations all the time as soon as they leave, they continue with the illegal business.”
He said that petrol queues were becoming unbearable for motorists in Minna and that it costs a lot of hardship to residents.
NAN reports that some of the filling stations operated by Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) have increased their pump price from the approved N145 per litre to between N180 to N200 per litre.
At the NNPC mega stations and other filling stations operated by major marketers, the queues are longer as they continue to dispense at the official pump price of N145 per litre.
In Minna town, a four-litre gallon of the product in the black market sells for N1,500 as transport fares have also increased due to the scarcity of the product.( NAN)