In the Southeast, there is a fuel shortage, and IPMAN is threatening to stop providing services

There’s going to be another round of fuel shortages in the South-East, as well as in the South-South and Middle Belt states, since the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, or IPMAN, has threatened to stop providing its services.

The notification was given on Sunday by the group and was signed by Emmanuel Inimgba, the zone secretary, and Prince Bobby Eberechi Dick, the zonal chairman, in a statement that was made accessible to janescope.

It lamented that their bridging claims had not been paid, even though they had paid their colleagues in the Northern zone the same amount.

The statement says, in part, “After a zone meeting held in our zonal office in Owerri on November 16, 2023, we, the entire members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) Eastern Zone, comprising of marketers in the mentioned states—Abia, Anambra, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Bayelsa, Cross River, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Kogi, and Nasarawa—resolved on the following.”

“That the Nigerian Downstream/Midstream Petroleum Regulatory Chief Executive Officer pay us our bridging claims as soon as possible, having already done so for our colleagues in the North-West and North-East Zones since the regime of subsidy removal on May 29, 2023, without any outstanding balance owed them.”

The Chief Executive Officer has been contacted on this matter, but he has declined to release funds or answer the correspondence, which makes this resolution even more necessary.

“Given the above circumstances, we are pleading with the Honorable Minister of State for Petroleum to step in right away and save our company as well as our members’ assets that were pledged as collateral to banks, where the funds were linked to the now-defunct Petroleum Equalization Fund (PEF).”

“We state equivocally that since we cannot fold our hands and see our hard-earned properties taken away by the banks, we will have no other option than to withdraw our services from the general public by the end of November 2023 if the monies are not released to us as done to the other zones.”