Members of the Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria Petroleum (IPMAN) and NUPENG in Oyo and Osun states have announced a shutdown of their operations with immediate effect.

The petroleum stakeholders, at an emergency meeting held in Ibadan on Saturday, hinged their decision on what they called harassment and extortion of members by the police.

The IPMAN co-chairman, Mutiu Bukola and the Petroleum Tanker Drivers branch of NUPENG, Hammed Hamzat, attended the emergency meeting.

Others were the chairman of the Independent Marketers branch of NUPENG, Surajudeen Adegoke and IPMAN’s vice-chairman, Olalekan Lawal.

They unanimously condemned the operations of the IGP monitoring team on the highway, which, they said, had been disrupting the lifting of petroleum products from depot to filling stations in the two states.

The IPMAN chairman, who spoke on behalf of others, called for an immediate end to harassment and extortion of members of the associations and said that they would not open for business until the issues were resolved.

According to him, no filling stations will open, and there will be no movement of petroleum tankers in the two states until the IGP monitoring team members are removed from the road.

“There will be no movement of trucks in and out of Osun and Oyo states, meaning that there will be no loading of petroleum products from depot to filling stations within the two states.

“The purpose of the IGP monitoring team was to stop vandalism of pipelines, but the team has left its function and is now chasing other things,” he said.

Mr Bukola alleged that the police team arrested and detained a tanker driver at Gbongon in the early hours of Saturday.

“The team has assumed the role of Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), which is the regulator in the sector.

“The NMDPRA officers at the lifting depot had already certified the product, meaning that there was no issue at all, only for the driver and the truck to be detained by the IGP monitoring team at Gbongbon,” he said.

Mr Bukola said the victimisation had been going on for a long time, adding that it must stop in the interest of the industry and Nigerians.

He said that in the last few months, the police team had wrongly arrested many tanker drivers and trucks, only to discover that they were innocent after investigations.

Mr Bukola claimed that police extortion had further compounded the challenges facing the associations, thus affecting the generality of Nigerians.

He also decried what he called multiple charges, which, he said, had been crippling operations in the petroleum sector in the two states.

(NAN)