Petroleum stakeholders in Oyo and Osun states have threatened to shutdown operations over alleged police harassment of their members.
The stakeholders who made this known in an emergency meeting held in Ibadan declared a total shutdown of operations in the two states with immediate effect indefinitely.
The stakeholders are Chairman, petroleum stakeholders and Chairman, Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria Oyo and Osun Mutiu Bukola and chairman Petroleum Tanker Drivers of NUPENG, Hammed Hamzat,
Others are Chairman, Independent Marketers Branch of NUPENG Surajudeen Adegoke and IPMAN, Vice Chairman, Olalekan Lawal.
They unanimously condemned the operation of the Nigerian Police; IGP monitoring team on the highway that had been disrupting the lifting of petroleum products from depot to filling stations.
Bukola stated that the petroleum stakeholders called for an immediate end to harassment and extortion of members of the associations and would not open for business until the issues were resolved.
He said no filling stations would open and there would be no movement of petroleum tankers in the two states until the said IGP monitoring team were removed from the road.
Bukola said “a tanker driver bringing in a truck load of diesel was arrested at Gbongan junction in Osun State in the early hours of Saturday and detain him and the truck illegal.
“The team assumed the role of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, (NMDPRA) who is the regulator in the sector.
“The NMDPRA officers at the lifting depot had certified the product meaning that there was no issue at all only for the driver and the truck to be detained by the IGP monitoring team at Gbongan.
“We called for the immediate release of the driver and the truck.”
According to him, the victimisation had been ongoing for long and need to stop for the good of the industry and Nigerians as a whole.
He said in the last few months the police team had wrongly arrested tanker drivers and trucks only to see they were wrong after investigations.
Bukola complained of the effect of multiple charges that have been crippling the operations in the petroleum sector in the two states.
He alleged the extortion of the police team had exacerbated the challenges facing the associations which was low allocations of petroleum products “and it is affecting Nigerians who are our customers.
“There would be no movement of trucks in and out of Osun and Oyo states meaning no loading of petroleum from depot to filing stations within Oyo and Osun states.
“The purpose of the IGP monitoring team was to stop vandalisation of pipelines but the team has left its function to chasing other things,” Bukola said.
