Marketers of Petrolum products in Nigeria have accused the Dangote Refinery of intentionally setting out to sell petrol to Nigerians at a high cost.
This is coming at the heels of allegations by the Dangote Refinery that petrol marketers are trying to import cheap adulterated fuel to flood the market at a cheaper price.
But speaking to Daily Post Tuesday in an interview the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria, PETROAN, president, Billy Gillis-Harry, and the National president of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Abubakar Maigandi, Dangote Refinery was built with the purpose to exploit Nigerians
Dangote Group spokesperson, Anthony Chiejina announced on Sunday that the price of Dangote Petrol stood at N960 and N990 per litre for ships and trucks, respectively.
“Between N990 of Dangote Refinery price and NNPCL’s price of N1025 per litre, the difference is N35. Dangote Petrol price would have been cheaper if the company meant well for Nigerians,” said Mr. Gillis-Harry
“As it is now, we cannot tell how much Dangote Petrol will sell when it finally lands across states with his current price template of N990 per litre (to trucks).”
Maigandi said the main aim of his organisation IPMAN was to sell cheaper products from the Dangote Refinery to Nigerians, but according to him this was not materialising.
He further stressed the need for Dangote to sell its petrol directly to IPMAN members.
“Maybe Dangote is not being properly briefed about IPMAN. In the oil industry, anyone who says he wants to fight with IPMAN will not succeed because we have 85 percent of filling stations in Nigeria.
“We cannot question the Dangote price because we are in a deregulation regime. What we are advocating is to buy petrol directly from Dangote refinery so we can sell at a cheaper rate than what we currently sell to Nigerians,” he said.
It seems the Dangote Refinery and the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited are working in lock step to keep the price of petrol high. NNPCL retail outlets sell PMS between N1025 and N1060, other filling stations sell between N1,115 and N1,300 nationwide.
