Fuel depots to operate 24hrs as PPMC alleges diversion of 587 trucks

About 387 trucks out of the 500 trucks that loaded fuel from Lagos to deliver to Abuja almost a week ago have disappeared in transit, thereby creating serious scarcity across the country. They have been diverted to other outlets where they are sold at higher, the Pipeline Products Marketing Company (PPMC) said Wednesday.

The 200 trucks that arrived between Sunday and Monday morning were able to do so through the help of the Department of State Security (DSS).

Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, the managing director of the PPMC, said out of the 1 billion litres that was promised for this month about 800 million litres had arrived the country. She said it was from it that 587 trucks were loaded to Abuja on December 15, from Lagos out of which 200 had just arrived the town.

However, as part of efforts to ease the fuel scarcity in the country, she said all petroleum depots had been directed to operate for 24 hours so that there could be faster evacuation of the products to different states of the federation from the depots scattered across the coastal states.

She however said henceforth every truck would be tracked so that when they are doing anything illegal it could easily be checked.

According to her, government is determined to ensure that it puts this ugly situation behind during this festival period.