Baru

Group Managing Director of The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr Maikanti Baru says Nigerians were being hindered from benefiting from the N145 per litre pump price of petrol because of the shady and unpatriotic activities of cross border smugglers of petroleum products.

Dr. Baru disclosed this on Monday when the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Mr. Hameed Ali visited him in Abuja as part of efforts to initiate a partnership that would arrest the increasing incidences of petroleum products racketeering.

The GMD explained that due to the averagely low price of petroleum products in Nigeria as compared to other neighbouring West African countries, smugglers were taking the advantage to divert truck-loads of the products from their intended destinations to service stations at border towns to supply to countries like Ghana, Niger and Benin Republic among others.

He categorically laid the blame of the smuggling on independent petroleum marketers, adding that such diversions and cross-border smugglings were impacting negatively on the distribution of the products in Nigeria.

“NNPC is worried that continued cross-border smuggling of petroleum products will deny Nigerians the benefits of federal government’s benevolence of keeping a fixed retail price of N145 per litre,” Baru said.

Responding, Ali noted that the country’s borders were porous especially in the northern axis during the rainy season and assured Baru that his intelligence unit would work with the Corporation by using intelligence reports to intercept and arrest the situation henceforth.