Azu EmuchayMr. Azu Emuchay is the Presidential Coordinator of Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) in-charge of Products Supply and Distribution in Kwara State. In this interview with MATTHEW DENIS, he sheds more light on the fuel situation in the state. Excerpts.

There has been protracted fuel scarcity in Kwara State, what is the major cause of this situation?

Let me start by saying that I resumed here 1st week of December 2015, so I'm few months old now. There has been a general challenge of the supply of petroleum products across the nation. Let me also add that much of the import of the products is done by the Nigeria National Petroleum Products Corporation (NNPC) even when the other stakeholders ought to have been participating in the importation, of course you know that NNPC alone can't do that. This is supposed to be an arrangement where NNPC takes the lion share and the rest of the stakeholders – the Major marketers and few independent marketers could then fill up the gap but this has not happened. And with the challenges of the foreign exchange and the bridged pipelines in the federal depots coupled with the general vandalism going on around the NNPC facilities to an extent that even if you bring in enough shipping, the supply, even when perceived to be enough might not be efficiently distributed. You know that the country is relying on the most inefficient manner of products distribution, which is trucking. My preference would have been the pipelines through the depots and of course the second better option will be through the railway. As those two options are not in place now, we are working to get them in place. We have resorted to trucking down the products now. So these are challenges coupled with the insufficient supply. In Kwara State for these few months, I think that even if you bring in 35million litres of petrol everyday, it probably won't be enough not because there is active demand in Nigeria but there are malpractices, there is huge diversion and hoarding of petroleum products. In other words, if you inject supply and few people take large quantity, it will affect the demand; of course you will have scarcity. Even if Nigeria have brought in larger quantity and there is movement across the border of petroleum products, there will be scarcity. So for me, this is very complex and it is the same people who are destroying the pipelines. These are complex factors that will continue to prevent adequate supply and I'm using the word adequate supply because the NNPC and Nigerians can do their best but there are people on the other side working to paralyse the system.

Ilorin depot supplies petroleum products to the entire Kwara and her neighbouring states like Niger, Kogi, Osun, Ekiti and parts of Oyo. Vandalism is a major factor preventing the flow of products into the depot, what effort has Federal Government taken to checkmate this?

Let me clear it here to you that Ilorin depot is a receiving depot, Mosimi depot for instance is both receiving and pumping depot. Like I said, we are employing the most inefficient manner of distribution, which is trucking because the pipelines are broken. Ilorin receives products from Ibadan, Lagos shoots to Mosimi, Mosimi shoots to Ibadan then Ibadan gives to Ilorin but you can't give what you don't have. The lines are broken and we try to do a throughput on the pipeline about two to three weeks ago. They started to put products in it but they found out that there are still breaches in the pipelines so they shutdown. The Federal Government is doing all it can to repair the pipes. They are doing their best by deploying security people along the pipelines, but for me, the major thing to look at is to appeal to the people who are breaking the pipelines because it doesn't even matter how much government is spending if that tendency to just go and cut the pipelines because you want to steal petrol or kerosene products is not stopped, the repairs will just be temporary and it will cost lots of money, which government can deploy to capital projects, because these things are occurring so fast and continuously . So much money is being devoted to repairing pipelines, yet the vandals are cutting it again. We resorted to trucking, which is taking time and inefficient because the roads are bad, the tanker drivers are holding us to ransom because they know that is the only way of moving the products. So, at any point in time there are hitches. There will always be an imbalance between demand and supply in the circle until we get there.

There was showdown between the DPR and IPMAN, with the regulating agency suspending its monitoring activities as a result of threat to lives of officials by the marketers who refused to sell at the official rate stating that they are loading above the official rate, in private depots in Lagos. Are you aware of this crisis?

Let me put it this way, there are rules and regulations and I'm not going to speak for the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN). But let me start by saying that under no circumstances should any group of persons take the law into their hands. There is only one constitution for Nigeria, the DPR is performing its official work, monitoring the regulated price of what government said the PMS should be sold for. The IPMAN members acquired licences to build petrol stations and these licences were issued based on conditions. So those conditions that prevail must be adhered to. DPR in carrying out its duty in defending the government position have the right to revoke these licenses when necessary. Let me even tell you that we have the case of the IPMAN people making allegation about paying money twice. And they have gone as far as making allegations that even some NNPC officials are implicated in that special accounts. I'm aware that the security forces are handling the issue now. There has been an intervention on the DPR/IPMAN issue and I'm aware that the intervention broke the ice yesterday (Thursday). The effort of the security forces and the so-called strike by Petrol Tanker Drivers (PTD) has been called-off and that is why fuel flow into Kwara State has been received.

We are one with DPR; both working for Federal Government to ensure compliance. I want to put it clear that it is not the right of any union to call for the redeployment of any Federal Government official, they are stepping beyond their boundary. If there is any indictment on anybody that Federal Government has sent here, it is in the place of the government to take action on the person. Nobody or group of people can dictate for the Federal Government. Just to put it on records, we received 21 trucks of PMS today (Friday). So that is going to alleviate the scarcity that we have been experiencing in Kwara in the last four to five days. We would ensure that massive injection of PMS into Kwara in the next seven to ten days. We'll ensure the process of loading at the depot and dumping into the underground tank take effect. My advice to Kwarans is to be patient and avoid panic buying because it takes away a lot from supply when you don't have immediate need for the quantity you bought. So, we have given instructions to limit quantity to buyers quantity; vehicle N2,000 and Okada N500 just to ensure that more people get the product. We have also discouraged selling in jerrycans and generators.

What is your take on the activities of black-marketers in the state?

Recently, precisely about two months ago, we got intelligence report on illegal dumps. We raided and discovered little depots that will contain about 8,000 to 20,000 litres of PMS that is quite a lot. This was in conjunction with DPR and the security force. We took some sample of the products and found out that there were adulterated products. There were people taking away products from the petrol stations to make more money, selling as black marketers and we have frustrated their efforts. We want Kwarans to realise that it does not pay anybody to patronise these people because the products could be adulterated and dangerous to their vehicles.