PETROLEUM marketers have decried a substantial drop in sales following the Bola Tinubu-led administration’s enforcement of proper deregulation (Petroleum subsidy removal) of the petroleum downstream sector.
The product, which currently sells above N1,000 in most filling station retail outlets across Nigeria, has caused a major shift in transport spending, with many middle-class Nigerians now opting for public transportation.
The marketers, as a result, lamented low patronage because of the high cost of the Petroleum product, adding that forces of demand and supply may force the price downward shortly.
The National President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Billy Gillis-Harry who spoke on the development told The ICIR that the current PMS pricing is affecting the sales and purchasing power of most middle-class Nigerians.
Gillis-Harry said, “Marketers, retail outlet owners, all of us in the industry are finding it difficult to cope with the current situation, we used to buy 45,000 litres of fuel a couple of months ago for less than N8.5 millio but tonday, we have to cough out about N49 million to buy the product.
“Financial institutions are not coming to our rescue. The cost of money is so high, it is so difficult to even sell, what we get to our retail outlets is not quickly bought because Nigerians also have the challenge with their buying power,” he added.
He stressed the chances of price coming down if there is seed funding to support major marketers at the single-digit interest rate.
Commenting in the same vein, the official spokesperson of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) Ukadike Chinedu, told The ICIR that filling stations nationwide have become ghost places as middle-class Nigerians have abandoned their vehicles and embraced public transportation.
“Most of the money we use in investing is bank money. It’s being borrowed and the interest rate is also high. There is no return on investment because the more we sell, the more we make profits,” Chinedu said.
“Now the volume of trade in the filling stations is very low because of the characteristics of the buyers who have now dropped some of their luxury vehicles with V8 and are now using alternative transportation.
“If you check some of the filling stations these days, you will find out that there is skeletal or ghost buying, two, or three cars will just come in and buy. We are no longer talking about scarcity, we are now talking about price differentials.”
The two unions urged President Bola Tinubu to provide ₦100bn as a seed fund for oil marketers to stay afloat, just like the aviation and agricultural sectors.
“We need N100bn seed fund to sustain our business amid foreign exchange fluctuations. We have already made that appeal to the federal government and hopefully, we’ll get that response soon,” Gilly-Harry said.
Nigerians are grappling with the weight of unprecedented food inflation, and energy prices which have quadrupled in the last year under the Tinubu administration. Specifically, the price per litre of petrol jumped from less than ₦200 to over ₦1,000.
Many people have blamed key policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of forex rates for the high living costs that have assailed the middle class.
Notably, citizens have staged two major protests to drive home their grievances against the Tinubu administration and pressured the All Progressives Congress (APC) government to reverse its “reforms” but the current administration has insisted that its policies are necessary and won’t be reversed.
Harrison Edeh is a journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, always determined to drive advocacy for good governance through holding public officials and businesses accountable.