Oil marketers have raised alarm that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, portal used for the purchase petrol has been shut against dealers, making it impossible for them to apply for the commodity.

The spokesperson of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chinedu Ukadike disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday.

According to him, marketers have more than 2,000 pending tickets for the purchasing of 45,000 liters of petrol, hinting that the situation may lead to another round of fuel scarcity nationwide.

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“I can’t confirm the price now because the portal is still shut down.

“We have more than 2,000 tickets for 45,000 liters (of petrol). That is 45,000 multiplied by 2,000, you can now know the number of million liters it will be. This is just an estimate, you know I don’t work with NNPCL and I don’t know what is on their system,” Ukadike stated.

He added that a 45,000-litre truckload of PMS is around N39.5 million, making N79 billion when multiplied by 2,000.

Reacting to the development, the spokesperson of NNPCL, Olufemi Soneye admitted that the state-owned firm shut the portal due to significant backlog to address.

Soneye explained that the shutdown became necessary to stop NNPCL from holding marketers’ capital for too long.

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“We have a significant backlog to address. The closure is intended to prevent us from holding marketers’ funds for an extended period,” Soneye had explained.

He, however, assured marketers that the portal would be reopened after the backlog had been reduced.

“It will be reopened once the backlog has been sufficiently reduced. We are working to address it as soon as possible,” he told our correspondent.

Marketers who spoke with our correspondent confirmed that NNPCL was expediting actions to clear the backlogs as of the weekend.

Though NNPCL did not disclose the value of the ‘huge backlogs’, independent marketers said they have over 2,000 tickets yet to be cleared with NNPCL.

The Petroleum Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria also confirmed that its members could not access the NNPCL purchasing portal.

PETROAN President, Billy Gillis-Harry, confirmed this in a phone conversation with Newsmen.

“The portal shutdown affects us too, we are all buying from NNPCL,” he said briefly.

Meanwhile, the marketers noted that they have since been patronising private depot owners, who sell petrol to them at a premium.

This, they said, informed why the product is more expensive in their filling stations than in outlets owned by the NNPC and the major marketers.

It was gathered that the marketers usually bid for PMS through the NNPCL portal.

According to them, payments will be made through the same channel while the marketer waits for months to get the product.