Ifeanyi Ubah urge President Buhari to probe oil marketers behind recent cuts in supply of petroleum products

The Managing Director of Capital Oil, Mr. Ifeanyi Ubah, at the weekend urged President Muhammadu Buhari to probe the recent cuts in supply of petroleum products that almost grounded the country with a view to bringing to book guilty marketers.

Ubah’s request to Buhari who on Friday assumed leadership of Nigeria was also accompanied with his call on him to remove fuel subsidy and totally deregulate the downstream oil sector of Nigeria.


Speaking with journalists in Abuja, he appealed to Nigerians to support deregulation as a means of sustaining supply of petroleum products at affordable prices.

“I have always been of the view that we should deregulate so that we can cut out corruption but unfortunately Nigerians didn’t take it from Jonathan,” Ubah said.

Although he confirmed that marketers were being owed money by government, Ubah however maintained that the agitation for the payment was not properly handled.

He said: “Indeed the marketers are being owed large sums of money and I am one of those being owed a large sum of money but I believe that dialogue should have been the choice of the marketers especially considering the state of the nation.

“It was unprecedented in the country for oil marketers to go on strike for up to four days and what I expected was there to have been a warning strike before a total shut down,” he added.

While disclosing that the decision to shut down the country was not a unanimous one, he stated that the few marketers who were behind the shutdown should be probed.

“It was unpatriotic for them to shut down the country. If this is not properly investigated there could be a repeat of such. Marketers should know that they are not labour unions. There was an agreement with government to pay them gradually, but they disregarded the agreement and unpatriotically threw the country into crisis,” Uba said.

Credit: Chineme Okafor/ThisDay