The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says Nigeria is losing millions of litres of petrol daily to smugglers.

The country’s daily consumption of petrol increased to 103 million litres per day in May, said the NNPC.

The Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mele Kyari, disclosed this at a stakeholders meeting organised by the corporation to stop smuggling.

Mr Kyari said, “From the truck-out report from the PPPRA database, we have seen a collapse of load-out average move from 70 million litres to 60 million litres just in one month. That means we can do with less than 70 million. 

“The balance, I don’t know where it goes to, but we know for sure that it is not consumed in this country. In very recent data, we see what we really want at the beginning of May and June. There was a day we loaded out about 103 million litres of PMS within one day across the depots.”

The NNPC boss acknowledged that the corporation knew that the 103 million litres were not required and were “inappropriate.” 

“We also know that something wrong is happening, that somebody is chasing something,” Mr Kyari added. “But we in NNPC are not in control of that. We are not in every depot. We don’t keep products in all the depots, but when the volume goes down, it comes down to us. When there is tight in supply, it comes back to the NNPC.”

President Muhammadu Buhari had directed that smuggling must stop, said Mr Kyari, adding that it was the reason for inviting the stakeholders to tackle the menace.

He disclosed that the corporation had brought in the EFCC, the SSS, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to stop petrol smugglers.

“Mr President has directed us that we must stop smuggling or round-tripping if there is anything like that, and so we must stop it by every means necessary, and we must do anything to stop it, that means we have to work outside the box.

“We know that there are layers of controls that have been there that are not working, and that is why we must work outside the box. That is why we are happy to drag in the EFCC, DSS, NSCDC, and even the NCS on a different platform that will enable us to control this volume, and we have seen it work,’’ he added.