The 2023 Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, on Sunday said the Nigerian Government was “solely expediting action on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway due to the business ties between President Bola Tinubu and Gilbert Chagoury, the owner of Hitech.”

Chagoury is the contractor responsible for the highway project.

Atiku said the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway contract was granted in violation of procurement regulations. 

In a statement signed by his Media Aide, Paul Ibe, Atiku disclosed that the involvement of Tinubu’s son and his associates on the boards of companies belonging to Chagoury presents a clear conflict of interest.

Atiku also claimed that Tinubu’s son, Seyi, is a director on the board of CDK Integrated Industries.

The former Vice President said instead of “enhancing the ease of doing business, the Tinubu government had allegedly demonstrated to the global community that his business endeavours and those of his family would consistently take precedence over national interests.”

Atiku claimed that the project being done with more than $13 billion was awarded without competitive bidding.

Atiku also claimed that the “so-called’ Badagry-Sokoto highway would be awarded similarly at an enormous cost to taxpayers purely because Tinubu had put his interest ahead of the Nigerian people.

Atiku said the demolition of tourist and recreational facilities and other properties within the Oniru corridor, including parts of Landmark, without ample notice, “is one of the reasons foreign direct investments continue to elude the country.”

He added that in more orderly environments, “establishments like Landmark would have been provided with a minimum of two years’ notice to facilitate proper planning.”

In an attempt to put an end to the fuel scarcity that has lingered for about two weeks across the country, petroleum marketers on Sunday advised the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority to continue its emergency fuel supply for another two weeks.

This came as the NMDPRA disclosed that about 4,000 trucks laden with Premium Motor Spirit departed Lagos depots for filling stations in various states over the weekend to supply the product.

The Federal Government had, through the NMDPRA, on Wednesday said it began a 15-day emergency fuel supply last week Monday to ensure the commodity circulates across the length and breadth of the country.

The government also disclosed that vessels importing PMS would continue to berth at the shore to discharge fuel to different depots, from where the product would be distributed to different filling stations.

In an interview with our correspondent on Sunday, the South-West Regional Coordinator of the NMDPRA, Ayo Cardoso, said no fewer than 300 million litres of petrol were loaded at various depots in Lagos between Friday and Sunday to reduce the queues in filling stations.

However, it appears the queues have yet to ease off to an appreciable level as many filling stations remain shut in Lagos, Ogun, Abuja, Oyo and others due to lack of fuel supply.

Our correspondents report that in some areas where the product was available, marketers sold for as high as N1,000 per litre, thereby causing long queues in stations selling for prices around N600.

Though marketers confirmed that the government was making efforts to reduce the queues in filling stations by ramping up fuel supply, they held that the emergency supply must continue for the next two weeks until the product is available in all the nooks and crannies of the country.

In an interview with our correspondent on Sunday, the Executive Secretary of the Major Energies Marketers Association of Nigeria, Clement Isong, said the depots and filling stations in the country were currently operating from the bottom of their reservoirs, saying more has to be done to ensure the tanks were filled up.

According to data obtained from the NMDPRA, it was gathered that as of Saturday, a total of 118 million litres of PMS was discharged from different vessels to marketers; being over 2,600 trucks if conveyed by 45,000-litre capacity tankers.

According to the data, Fatgbems Petroleum received 13,688,420 litres from the SL Aremu vessel. From Binta Saleh, A.A. Rano Oil and Gas got 27,485,750 litres, while STI Yorkville discharged 49,069,623 litres of PMS to NIPCO, Total, 11 Plc and NRL, through the ASPM jetty.

Also, MT Watson discharged a total of 27,295,511 litres to Bono Energy and Asharami.

According to the promise of the NMDPRA that vessels would continue to berth for 15 days, Cardoso told our correspondent that the vessels were discharging the product for onward delivery to retail outlets across the nation.

At Cluster 1 in Apapa on Saturday, it was said that AITEO was allocated 23 trucks; MRS, 49 trucks; OVH/NRL, 45 trucks; NIPCO, 61 trucks of PMS, and 11 Plc, 77 trucks. Others include Ardova and Total JV.

Our correspondent gathered that the Total terminal in Apapa was programmed to receive the product from Golden Dahlia, from where HOGL Energy also received PMS on Saturday.

At Cluster 2 in Ibafon, T-Time Petroleum reportedly got 25 trucks, containing 1,196,000 litres of PMS, while Fatgbems received 20 trucks containing 780,000 litres of the product.

Eighteen trucks of 598,000 litres were allocated to Techno Oil and Bono received 32 trucks of 1,535,000 litres. MRS Limited also got 170 trucks of 8 million litres from Ibafon.

Similarly, at Cluster 3 in Ijegun, the Pinnacle Oil and Gas was allocated 312 trucks and A.A. Rano got 129 trucks of PMS, 111 trucks of which were loaded on Friday.

The PUNCH reliably gathered that 128,236 metric tonnes of PMS, about 170 million litres, was awaiting haulage as of Saturday. The haulage was meant to be carried out by MT Keonamex, 20,172MT; MT Stena Immaculata, 18,955MT and MT STI Stability 89,109MT.

On Sunday, Cardoso informed our correspondent that T-Time Petroleum loaded 20 trucks of 1,000,000 litres; Fatgbems got 42 trucks of 1,850,000 litres; Techno Oil received nine trucks of 347,001 litres; Bono Energy, 22 trucks of 1,004,000 litres, while MRS Ltd loaded 180 trucks, being 8,500,000 litres of petrol.

In all, it was gathered that about 4,000 trucks of PMS flooded filling stations between Friday and Sunday.

Cardoso disclosed that six PMS vessels berthed across six jetties on Sunday, four out of which discharged a total of 187 million litres of PMS.

“The remaining two vessels that will hopefully commence after completion of the protocol prescribed in the SOP for Jetty Operations are laden with approximately 150 million litres,” he said.

The NMDPRA regional coordinator said he and his team have been on the field to ensure even distribution of the products, assuring Nigerians that PMS would soon get to all filling stations.

While warning against panic buying, Cardoso said the agency would continue to monitor the situation to ensure strict compliance.

 Ex-depot prices

Cardoso also released the ex-depot prices of the product, which ranged from N556 per litre to N645.

The ex-depot price is the price of a product, in this case, petrol, at the depot or storage facility where it is held before being transported to filling stations.

 In other words, the ex-depot price is the price at which the product is sold to marketers or distributors at the depot, excluding the cost of transportation, taxes, and other charges. It is the wholesale price of the product before it reaches the consumer.

Other additional costs, such as transportation, taxes, and profit margins, are added to the ex-depot price to determine the final retail price paid by consumers at the pump.

According to the data supplied by Cardoso, the NNPC Retail has the lowest ex-depot price of N556/litre, followed by OVH/NRL at N556.5/litre.

Others are 11 Plc, N599; NIPCO, N623; AITEO, N589.50; MRS Plc, N598; Ardova, N585; T-Time Petroleum, N610; Fatgbems, N597; Techno Oil, N600 and Bono Energy, N645/litre.

Marketers seek supply

Speaking with our correspondent, the MEMAN Executive Secretary, Isong, expressed the belief that there was an increase in supply, adding that the queues will disappear if the government keeps the tempo.

He explained, “I think the tanks were really down. So, when you restore supply, the queues will disappear. There are five reservoirs of petrol; the last reservoir is the one in the tank of a car. You can operate from the top or bottom of your tank. In the recent past, petrol stations have been operating from the bottom of their tanks. If a petrol station has two 45,000-litre tanks and it has only five or 10,000 litres, it is operating from the bottom of its tank. That is the second reservoir.

 “The third reservoir is what they call ‘goods-in-transit’. If the supply chain is working correctly, then at any point in time, we should have a thousand trucks on the road delivering products. That is another reservoir, the same thing for the pipelines. If the pipeline is full, that is another reservoir. That is the transportation.”

He added, “After that, we have the depots. If the depots are full, that is the biggest reservoir you have. We then have the vessels, whether it is the mother vessel or daughter vessel. That is another couple of million litres. Sometimes, if the cut in your supply chain is such that one of those reservoirs is empty, it will not be too difficult to come back. But in a world in which all your reservoirs are already operating from the bottom of the tanks; people don’t have enough in their tanks, you don’t have enough goods in transit, you don’t have enough in the tanks of the filling stations, you don’t have enough in the depots over some time; when you have this kind of challenge of scarcity, you really need to flood the market with 150 to 200 per cent of the normal supply for two to three weeks so that everything fills up.”

 Isong emphasised that the filling stations needed to be full, saying there were times in filling stations when trucks would be waiting to discharge because the underground tanks were still full.

“When you have that, it means you have filled up your complete supply chain. But where everything is just at the bottom of the tank, if one thing goes wrong, the entire supply chain dries up again. I think that is the stage that we’ve got to. We need to ramp up supply significantly in the country to about 200 per cent for about two weeks so that the entire supply chain becomes robust again. That way, we can avoid this sort of challenge,” the MEMAN leader stated.

Fillings stations shut

Meanwhile, some filling stations in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, closed their shops due to the non-availability of PMS.

It was also observed that taxi drivers refused to buy from stations willing to sell the products at a rate they considered to be too exorbitant.

This hike in price had however, caused motorists to queue for long hours at a few filling stations such as the NNPC at MKO Abiola Junction as well as its Fowobi outlet, where the product was sold for N600/litre.

Our correspondents report that black marketers were still taking advantage of the situation to make brisk business as they sold for between N1,000 and N1,500/litre.

Commercial drivers in the state capital told our correspondent that some of them slept at the few filling stations selling below N700.

When one of our correspondents visited some fuel stations along the Ikotun-Idimu-Egbeda axis, it was observed that two fuel station outlets belonging to the NNPC Retail along the College Bus Stop were selling.

Our correspondents report that one of the NNPCL outlets on the same axis that witnessed a very long queue was selling the product for N680/litre, while the other one with no queues was selling for N840/litre.

An attendant at the outlet that was selling for N840, who gave her name simply as Mary, said, “We are independent marketers, so everyone is selling according to how they bought. The other outlet is a major marketer that is why it is selling for N680/litre”.

Our correspondents report that queues persist in petrol Stations owned by major marketers in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on Sunday.

It was observed that long queues of vehicles were common in stations such as NNPC, Total, MRS and Conoil. However, the supply of fuel in the town has improved as stations owned by the major marketers sold PMS between N580 and N650/litre.

Some independent marketers including Amorry, MKJ, Neemam and Tigress were selling fuel for an average of N1,000/litre as vehicles moved in and out of the stations freely without experiencing any delay.

In Sokoto State, the scarcity of petroleum continued as of Sunday, with one litre selling at the rate of N1,150 naira in most of the filling stations.

One of our correspondents who monitored the situation in the state on Sunday gathered that none of the major marketers in the metropolis dispensed the product.

It was observed that almost all the independent oil marketers in the state opened for business, selling a litre of PMS above N1,000. Also, black marketers sold the product for N1,400/litre on Sunday.

Nigerians have continued to appeal to the President Bola Tinubu-led administration to take urgent actions to put an end to the fuel scarcity, which they said is already inflicting more hardships on them.

Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a lawsuit against Nigeria’s governors and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Mr Nyesom Wike “over their failure to account for N5.9 trillion and $4.6 billion loans obtained by their states and the FCT, and to publish copies of the loan agreements, including details and locations of projects executed with the loans.” 

The suit followed the disclosure last month by Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State that the immediate past administration of Nasir El-Rufai left $587m, N85bn debt and 115 contractual liabilities, making it impossible for the state to pay salaries. 

In the suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/592/2024 filed last Friday at the Federal High Court, Abuja, SERAP is asking the court to “direct and compel the governors and Mr Wike to account for N5.9trn and $4.6bn loans obtained by their states and the FCT and to publish copies of the loan agreements, location of projects executed with the loans.” 

SERAP is also asking the court to “direct and compel the governors and Mr Wike to invite the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission [ICPC] to investigate the spending of all the loans obtained to date by their states and the FCT.”

In the suit, SERAP is arguing that, “It is in the public interest to grant the reliefs sought. Nigerians have the right to see and scrutinise the loan agreements and know the details of how the domestic and external loans obtained by the governors and FCT minister are spent.”

According to SERAP, “Opacity in the spending of the loans obtained by the governors and Mr Wike would continue to have negative impacts on the fundamental interests of the citizens.”

SERAP is also arguing that, “Many states and the FCT are reportedly spending public funds which may include the loans obtained by them to fund unnecessary travels, buy exotic and bulletproof cars and generally fund the lavish lifestyles of politicians.”

SERAP is also arguing that, “Many states and the FCT are also allegedly mismanaging public funds which may include domestic and external loans obtained from bilateral and multilateral institutions and agencies.”

According to SERAP, “Many states and the FCT reportedly owe civil servants’ salaries and pensions. Several states are borrowing to pay salaries. Millions of Nigerians resident in the state and FCT continue to be denied access to basic public goods and services such as quality education and healthcare.”

According to SERAP, “Transparency in the spending of the loans obtained by the states and FCT is fundamental to increase accountability, prevent corruption, and build trust in democratic institutions with the ultimate aim of strengthening the rule of law.”

The suit filed on behalf of SERAP by its lawyers Kolawole Oluwadare, Kehinde Oyewumi and Ms Valentina Adegoke, read in part: “States and the FCT should be guided by transparency and accountability principles and proactively account for the loans obtained and publish copies of the loan agreements.”

“Widely publishing copies of the loan agreements and spending details of the loans obtained would ensure that persons with public responsibilities are answerable to the people for the performance of their duties in the management of public funds.”

“State governors and Mr Wike cannot hide under the excuse that the Freedom of Information Act is not applicable to their states and the FCT. The legal obligations to publish the information sought are also imposed by the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.”

“According to Nigeria’s Debt Management Office, the total public domestic debt portfolio for the country’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory is N5.9 trillion. The total public external debt portfolio is $4.6 billion.”

“The domestic and external loans obtained by the states and the FCT are vulnerable to corruption and mismanagement. The states and FCT have a responsibility to ensure transparency and accountability in how any loans obtained by the states and FCT are spent, to reduce vulnerability to corruption and mismanagement.” 

“Directing and compelling the states and FCT to publish copies of the loan agreements would allow Nigerians to scrutinise them, and promote transparency and accountability on the spending of public funds including the loans obtained.”

“Providing and widely publishing the details of the spending of the domestic and external loans obtained by the states and FCT would enable Nigerians to effectively and meaningfully engage in the management of the loans.”

“The constitutional principle of democracy also provides a foundation for Nigerians’ right to know the details of loan agreements and how the loans obtained are spent. Citizens’ right to know promotes openness, transparency, and accountability that is in turn crucial for the country’s democratic order.”

“The effective operation of representative democracy depends on the people being able to scrutinize, discuss and contribute to government decision making, including on the spending of loans obtained by the states and FCT.”

“To do this, they need information to enable them to participate more effectively in the management of public funds by their state governments and the FCT.” 

“The public interest in obtaining information about expenditures relating to the loans obtained by the states and FCT outweighs any privacy or other interest.”

“The oversight afforded by public access to such details would serve as an important check on the activities of the states and FCT and help to prevent abuses of the public trust.”

“There is a significant risk of mismanagement or diversion of funds linked to loans obtained by state governments and the FCT. The accounts of Nigeria’s 36 states and the FCT are generally not open to public scrutiny.”

“The Nigerian Constitution, human rights and anticorruption treaties to which Nigeria is a state party also impose obligations on the states and FCT to prevent mismanagement or diversion of public funds including the loans obtained.”

“Many years of allegations of corruption and mismanagement of public funds including the loans obtained by the states and FCT have contributed to widespread poverty, underdevelopment and lack of access to public goods and services.” 

No date has been fixed for the hearing of the suit.

British actor Bernard Hill, best known for his supporting roles in “Titanic” and “The Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, died on Sunday aged 79, his agent announced.

He played Captain Edward Smith in the Oscar-winning 1997 epic romance “Titanic”, and earned worldwide recognition playing Theoden, King of Rohan, in two of the three “The Lord Of The Rings” films directed by Peter Jackson.

His agent Lou Coulson confirmed his death in the early hours of Sunday to British media outlets.

Early in his career, Bernard Hill featured in the BBC’s 1982 acclaimed drama “Boys from the Blackstuff”, which won numerous awards and is still lauded as one of the finest examples of its genre from the era.

He is set to return to television screens in series two of a contemporary BBC drama, “The Responder”, starring Martin Freeman, which begins airing in the UK later on Sunday.