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The Director of Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Mr. Mordecai Ladan says his organization has fined 20 marketers N2.5 billion over the diversion of nine million litres of Premium Motor Spirit. Mr. Ladan stated this on Wednesday on the sidelines of a meeting of Zonal Controllers from 28 states and heads of divisions in the Federal Capital Territory. The Head of Public Affairs Unit who spoke on behalf of Ladan disclosed that the marketers diverted products meant for intervention in areas that recorded acute shortage.


“The DPR has uncovered massive diversion of petroleum products. This is because of a Special Intelligence Unit that we just created to intensify surveillance. This unit goes about to give us reports, in fact they work day and night. We received a report that largely some of the diverted products do not appear on the manifest.


About 162 trucks, slightly above nine million litres have been discovered to be diverted within the month of January and February. This gives DPR a lot of concerns and that was why the DPR gathered all the controllers across the country to make sure they further re-strategise and are given clear-cut directives as to how they should go about uncovering these sharp practices. The products so far diverted, largely are from Kano NNPC depot, where intelligence gave us a report about one marketer A.Y Maikifi diverting 115 trucks within a month, specifically meant for interventions.


And those trucks never got to any station because the station he claimed to be taking the truck is a non-existing station. DPR intelligence unit visited there and discovered that the land is not even cleared let alone a filling station existing there.
He said DPR was not aware of the intervention products given to marketers by NNPC because it was not involved.


Intervention products are products that are given to marketers to take to certain locations to beef up supply. We were surprised that these products were taken to difficult locations with hope that DPR will not locate them,’’ he said. He stated that all marketers found to be culpable are to pay N275 per litre instead of the usual N145 to the Treasury Single Account.


For instance, AYM Maikiffi has been fined N1.2 billion and he must pay because he could not account for the products. There are smaller marketers that have since commenced payment of their fine. We have realised over N12 million from marketers who have come forward to confess that they diverted products and are willing to pay the fine. Some have paid up to 50 per cent while some are still pleading for a waiver but until they finish paying, DPR will not lift the fine,” he said.

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