Oil marketers under the aegis of Natural Oil and Gas Suppliers Association of Nigeria (NOGASA) have called on the federal government to pay them their outstanding petroleum equalisation fund (PEF) to enable them get money for fuel importation.

The marketers also called on the NNPC to release the petrol that they paid for three months before President Bola Tinubu announced the removal of fuel subsidy

National president of NOGASA, Mr. Bennett Korie, who disclosed these yesterday in Abuja, insisted that there is need to also consider the problems associated with the subsidy removal.

Korie, while speaking with journalists decried that its members now spent as much as N25 million to purchase a 45,000 litres truck of Premium Motor Spirit popularly referred to as petrol.

Before the subsidy was withdrawn, a fuel tanker was purchased for N7 million.

According to NOGASA, the situation has made it impossible for its members to cough out the differentials.

He however assured the federal government that they are completely in support of the subsidy removal.

“We are 100 per cent in support of subsidy removal, but you know that everybody is talking about subsidy removal but they don’t talk about the problem behind the subsidy removal. It is good to remove subsidies but there are things that people don’t know, for instance, some of the marketers don’t have the money to pay the differentials.

“This is because in less than an hour that Mr. President announced the removal of the subsidy, the price changed and that affected a lot of marketers. We are talking about millions of naira. Before the removal, a tanker of fuel was selling for about seven million, but in less than an hour, it went up to 25 million naira, where is the money?

Korie said that Nigeria’s high interest rate of 30 per cent was making it difficult for marketers to make profits. According to him, where would marketers get money from to continue the distribution of petroleum products across the country.

He urged the federal government to pay marketers their outstanding of the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) to boost their capital and enable them to stay in business.

“Subsidy was removed without considering some of these problems. At the same time, before now, we have this PEF. But they are not paying the marketers. There is no money, where do we get the money?

“Therefore, I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the government to please pay marketers their PEF, so that they will continue in business, if it is not paid, we would not get fuel to sell,” he said.