By Ahmad Umar
Gombe (Nigeria) – Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), a subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Company, has impounded five vehicles found with large quantity of petroleum products in reconstructed tanks at a filling station in Gombe, northeast of the country
Operational Controller of DPR, Abdullahi Abawa disclosed this to journalists in Gombe during a routine surveillance at one of the filling stations, where DPR officials discovered the five vehicles
He said the Department was all out to ensure that vehicle owners, who had deviced dubious means of buying fuel in large quantities and reselling to the public at a very high cost are checked.
According to him, men of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), will now deal with the perpetrators according to the law.
Our Correspondent reports that for about three months now, motorists have been experiencing long queues at petrol filling stations as a result of scarcity, which the Department of Petroleum Resources attributes to inadequate supply.
Abawa said that since December, the state has been getting 4, 158 litres per week, which is 594 thousand litres per day, about 15 trucks of 40 thousand litres per day, while the weekly requirement for Gombe State is 4 million, 158 thousand litres.
The Operational Controller said that the department has been trying its best to ensure that the fuel supplied gets to the end users, but that marketers and some fraudulent elements have deviced fraudulent means of acquiring the product and reselling it at a high price.
He said scarcity of the product was encouraging and increasing fraudulent activities by some people and the filling stations, thereby causing untold hardships.
Abawa defended allegations of collecting bribes levelled against staff of the Department from owners of filling stations as false, saying that staff of the Department were well paid and cannot come down so low as to collect stipends.
