Many filling stations in Aba, the commercial nerve centre of Abia State, have shut down due to high cost of sourcing petroleum products from third party marketers other than the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Investigation reveals that some filling stations in the city that sell petrol to the people at prices between N1300 and N1350 were the ones that lifted the products at costs more than NNPC control prices.
In an interview, the Executive Chairman, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Aba branch, Mazi Oliver Okolo, said that the NNPC had not supplied petroleum products to their members in the past three months.
He said the NNPC had been selling the products to some suppliers, who indirectly sell the product to the IPMAN members at exorbitant prices.
Mazi Okolo said, “Our members now lift petrol at high costs and sell to motorists and other users at high cost,” adding that if the refineries were working, people would buy petrol at an affordable prices.