The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Nigeria Customs Service and the Department of Petroleum Resources will inaugurate a Joint Committee to tackle petroleum products smuggling across the country.
The strategic move was decided at a meeting at the Customs House in Abuja yesterday which was attended by the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service, Retired Colonel Hamid Ali and the Director of the Department of Petroleum Resources, Mr. Mordecai Ladan.
The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation stated at the meeting that smuggling of petroleum products across the nation’s borders is causing serious loss to the nation’s revenue generation drive and had been subverting government’s efforts to ensure adequate supply of petroleum products in all parts of the country.
Dr. Baru explained that the menace is also denying Nigerians the full benefits of the goodwill of President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
According to him the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had not relented in its effort to flood the nation’s petroleum products market and avoid shortages at all times, regretting that the activities of unscrupulous marketers remained a major concern as diversion and smuggling seem to continue unabated.
Dr Baru called for stiffer punitive measures against unscrupulous marketers found diverting and smuggling petroleum products, and charged the Customs to intensify surveillance along the identified border communities and other suspected areas to check the activities of petroleum products smugglers.
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