IPMAN Threatens To Shut Down Stations In Ogun Over DSS’ Threat

Ogun State chapter of Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) on Wednesday, threatened to shut down all its retailing outlets across the state should the security agencies proceed with its threats to clampdown on its members over the current fuel scarcity, as well as the hike in the dispensing price of petroleum.

IPMAN state chairman, Otunba Femi Adelaja, who stated this in Abeokuta, the state capital, berated the security agency over the threat to clampdown on its members for arriving at such policy without reckoning with the reality of events in the supply chain of the product.

Adelaja said the security agency has failed in its sense of reasoning with genuine business operators who do not get product from any of the government’s depots across the South West zone to enable them sell at the same at government approved price.

Last Thursday, the DSS gave all the stakeholders in the fuel supply chain a 48-hour deadline to restore normal supply of petroleum products at officially approved rate across the country “or be ready to face the consequences of their actions.”

But in an apparent reaction to the security agency’s position, Adelaja, who briefed journalists on the resolution of his association, said security operatives should go after those who are making supplies difficult for IPMAN members at the various depots across the country.

Adelaja said the resolution of his members at an emergency meeting held at Mosimi Depot on Wednesday included that the “shutting down our outlets across the state as a mark of protests, as this is the only way to let the government know the clear margin it is creating among major and independent marketers.”

“Rather than for the security operatives to go after those who are making supplies difficult for IPMAN members, they have chosen the path of dishonour by threatening to go after IPMAN members, whose businesses survives on loans and other credit facilities provided by commercial banks at a not-too-friendly interest rate,” he said in a statement made available to LEADERSHIP.