The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association IPMAN,has called on the Organized Labour to shelve the Industrial action it proposed to begin on Monday and support the federal government,’s deregulation policy.
The National Secretary of the Association,Danladi Pasali ,who made the call on Sunday while speaking with the press advised Labour to go back to the drawing board,as some of its members especially NUPENG and PENGASEN who are the engineers in Labour saw billions of naira were being pumped into the sector without the refineries working, but never protested why the refineries were not working.
Pasali said with the current situation in the world, there was no way a country will continue to import petroleum products spending trillions, and advised that business should be left in the hands of businessmen.”The truth is that deregulation is the only option for now.There is no way out” he said.
” With the deregulation, there will be a time that the price will come down At a time the price came down and people were buying product at N123, N124. even some filling stations were selling N110, N115 and with the present situation that the federal government is planning to bring in a gas policy, whereby motorists would have an option”, he said.
According to him, this is the right time for deregulation,He said ,”with the present situation of covid-19, affecting countries in the whole world,we have to look inwards we should not continue to import petroleum products because that would drain the whole economy.”
” For quite some time now, Nigeria has been suffering from the epilepsy of our refineries because refineries are being left in the hands of government .If it is in private hands, it will go on well. lf you go to Lagos,Port Harcourt or Calabar now,you see tank farms people have established strategic tank farms,all equipments are working very well because they are being managed by private people,but if you go to all the depots in the country,we have 21 depots and you will find out that a lot of equipments are not working.”
