By Ediri Ejoh & Obas Esiedesa
Three days after the Federal Government denied that it planned to hike the pump price of petrol, independent marketers have raised their price to N280 per litre.
Checks on petrol situations in Abuja on Saturday morning showed that while NNPC Retail stations maintained a pump price of N179 per litre, the major marketers dispensed at N180 per litre.
With most filling stations shut down due to lack of supply, long queues were noticed at the stations selling between N179 to N190 per litre.
The government through the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, had in a statement disclosed that there was no plan to hike the price of petrol.
The agency which insisted that the country had 34 days of sufficiency in stock, however, failed to state what the current government-approved price is.
Speaking to Vanguard, the Public Relations Officer of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, Chinedu Ukadike attributed the hike in the price of the product to the increase in the cost of purchasing it at the privately owned depots.
However, checks in Lagos indicated that the product was sold at between N250 and 280 per liter, while hawkers of the product continue to sell between N300 and N400 per liter.
Commenting on the development, the National President of IPMAN, Chinedu Okoronkwo, said the non-functional tank farms across the country continue to impact on distribution.
He said: “The major area that affects us as Independent marketers is distribution. We have made several presentations. Before now, we had depots, I mean land depots, both in Kano, Maiduguri, Makurdi, Port- Harcourt, Aba, Enugu, and the rest. Some of these depots have not been dispensing products for some time now, due mainly to pipeline vandalism.”
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