Marketers to suspend fuel importation over N356.2bn unpaid subsidy claims

Nigerians may have to brace up for another round of petrol scarcity across the coun­try by Monday, as the Major Oil Marketers As­sociation of Nigeria (MO­MAN) yesterday, said it was practically impossi­ble for it to continue with petrol import as a result of the inability of the fed­eral government to clear subsidy debts amounting to N356.2 billion.

Indeed, MOMAN said the available stock of petrol at the Apapa, Lagos depot would have been exhausted by Monday after the week­end break.

‘‘From today (yesterday) what we have left as stock can only take us for three and a half days. So what that means in effect is that, by Monday we would run out of stock,’’ Executive Secretary of MOMAN, Mr. Obafemi Olawore said.

Giving a breakdown of the N356.2 subsidy debt, Olawore explained that outstanding debt on forex and interest amounts to N215,868,237,459 while payment for Batch T of 2014 stood at N21,920,240,980.23 and Batch U 2014 at another N8,607,109,593.82 with Batch A 2015 amount­ing to N6,873,232,365.66 and Batch B 2015 at N2,911,139,639.70.

However, the MOMAN scribe said another N100 billion was equally out­standing, which the Fed­eral Government gave as post-dated Sovereign Debt Note (SDN) due to mature by end of April also formed part of the 356.2bn debt.

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