Fuel Scarcity: NSCDC ordered to monitor petrol stations Published on April 4, 2016

Fuel Scarcity: NSCDC ordered to monitor petrol stations

Published on April 4, 2016

Commandant-General of NSCDC, Abdullahi Gana

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, on Monday disclosed that its officials have been given an order to ensure a surveillance of filling stations across the country with an aim to curtailing hoarding and black market operation.
The NSCDC said Alhaji Abdullahi Gana Muhammadu, its Commander-General, gave the order after meeting with the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu last Thursday.
The security body said this move was “aimed at curtailing the activities of black market operators and others benefiting from people’s misery.
“Officials of the NSCDC would therefore be assigned to petrol stations across the country in order to carry out the directive,” the corps said in a statement to our correspondent on Monday.
Government has outlawed selling of petrol on roadsides and directed the NSCDC to arrest and prosecute offenders.
Muhammadu therefore ordered the deployment of officers of the corps to petrol stations across the country to help check sharp practices and ensure the smooth supply and distribution of the product.
There would also be a 24-hour surveillance on oil terminals where crude oil is being loaded and on the rigs where drilling operations take place.
In Abuja, 280 officers have been deployed to the metropolis to ease the operations of NNPC.
Officers have also been deployed in the same vein in states like, Delta, Edo, Lagos, Ogun, Osun and Oyo.‎
‎The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, during the meeting, stated that the involvement of NSCDC operatives became necessary following the need to ensure total eradication of queues from fuel stations across the country and for effective monitoring of the distribution system.
“This calls for effective monitoring of the supply system, especially at the end points, to ascertain that what is trucked out from the depots is delivered at the designated fuel stations and dispensed to the public in the most efficient manner.
“We need you to be out there to help achieve this; we can’t be at ease while Nigerians are going through so much pain to get fuel,” he said.
He called on the officers deployed for monitoring duties to be vigilant and ensure that all the petrol designated for their respective stations is delivered and dispensed to members of the public in a most efficient manner.
Meanwhile the scarcity persisted on Monday as many fuel stations in Lagos and Ogun states remained shut. The few that had fuel sold above N200 per litre.