(Ecofin Agency) - The Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Kachikwu, has revealed that more than 30% of petrol being dispatched to Lagos are being diverted to neighboring countries, like Chad and Cameroon.

According to the Minister, 400 trucks laden with petrol from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) were sent to Lagos but only 250 discharged their contents.

He stated that the inability of the Ministry to observe the activities of the petrol tankers has made them succeed in diverting the products to other countries but the government is currently making effort to curtail this situation by installing trackers on every truck as well as recording the depots and filling stations they are to supply.

« We continued to hold on to the umbrella of a major importer of the product. We are working very hard to ensure that PMS supplied in this country is not diverted. We have pumped 400 trucks of product into Lagos State in the last five days. The total consumption in Lagos at maximum time is 250 trucks. These trucks are diverted from Lagos to the outer hither land to the border and proceed to Chad and Cameroon. We need literally a whole army to stop this act. So, what we continue to do is to supply and oversupply just to cover the gap. What we want to embark on is engaging only truckers which have trackers to make it easy for us to monitor the movement of product in the country,» Kachikwu told Today news.

He added NNPC has witnessed a decrease in its loss to 3 billion Naira compared to the over N300 billion a month.

Anita Fatunji