Gombe
Five vehicles were yesterday impounded by the Department of Petroleum Resources at a Gombe filling station for reconstructing their fuel tanks and using them in the illegal fuel deals in the state.
This was happening even as the scarcity of the commodity bites harder in the North east state.
Speaking to journalists in Gombe during the routine surveillance at one of the filling stations, DPR Operational Controller for Gombe, Alhaji Abdullahi Abawa, said they discovered the five impounded vehicles with reconstructed tanks of trucks.
Abawa said the department’s act stemmed out of the effort to protect the public from vehicle owners who had deviced dubious means of buying fuel in large quantities and reselling to the public at very high cost.
According to him, men of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps will now deal with the perpetrators according to the stipulations of the law.
Our Correspondent reports that in the last three months, residents of Gombe have been trying to come to terms with the long queues at petrol filling stations and scarcity, which the DPR attributed to insufficiency in the level of supply of the commodity in the state.
It said since December, the state has been getting 4, 158 litres per week, which is 594 thousand litres per day; about 15 trucks of 40 thousand litres per day, against the weekly sufficiency requirement of 4 million.
Abawa refuted allegations of bribery among the staff of the DPR and owners of filling stations, saying the staff were well paid and could not stoop so low as to collect stipends.
