About 162 trucks containing eight million litres of petrol supplied by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as intervention products were diverted from their original destination across Nigeria between December 2017 and February 2018, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has said.
DPR’s Public Relations Officer for its Abuja office, Mohammed Saidu told journalists after all controllers of the organisation met in Abuja that its Special Intelligence Unit (SPU) created to monitor the situation made this discovery.
The Public Relations officer told journalists that a marketer based in Kano, A.Y Maikifi, alone diverted 115 trucks between December 2017 and January 2018.
He added that the marketer has been fined N1.2 billion for the infraction.
“The DPR has uncovered massive diversion of products. These were as a result of Special Intelligence Unit that we just created to intensify surveillance. This SPU goes about to give us report, in fact they work day and night. We received report that largely some of the diverted products do not appear on the manifest.
“About 162 trucks slightly above 9 million litres have been discovered to be diverted between January and February,” said Saidu.
“These give DPR a lot of concerns and that was why DPR gathered all the controllers across the country to make sure they further strategise and give clear cut directives as to how they should go about uncovering these sharp practices.
“The products so far diverted were from Kano NNPC depot where one marketer, A.Y Maikifi diverted 115 trucks between December 2017 and January 2018 and you could see that it was the peak of the crisis.
“Those trucks were specifically meant for intervention but those trucks never got to any station because the station he claimed to be taking the truck was a non-existing station. Our intelligence unit visited there and discovered that the land was not even cleared let alone a filling station existing there,” he added.
He added that the DPR called for the meeting to ensure the controllers will replicate the intelligence unit in their areas.
“The concern is that these products were not in the manifest. Were it not for the intelligence unit, there was no way DPR would have known such product existed let alone track.”
“All the marketers that have been found culpable have been fined N275 per litre (of product diverted). For instance, AYM Maikiffi has been fined N1.2 billion and he must pay because he could not account for the product.
“There are smaller marketers that have since commenced payment of their own. We have realised over N12 million from marketers who have come forward to accept they have diverted and are willing to pay the fine. Some have paid up to 50 per cent while some are still pleading but until they finished payment DPR will not lift the fine.”
According to Saidu, the products diverted were mostly those given by NNPC to marketers to take to certain locations to beef up supply.
He however noted that the marketers took the products to difficult location where they think DPR cannot locate.
“But our special intelligence unit went as far to those areas to discover that the products meant for intervention did not only go there but the filling stations never existed. They saw a flat land that was not cleared.”