How do the independent marketers see this removal of fuel subsidy as announced by PPPRA?
When people are talking about removal of subsidy, we the independent marketers are not against that. But our problem with the government is that the platform is not there. They should build the platform. Happy enough, Reginald Stanley who is the executive secretary of PPPRA was once the managing director of PPMC, when I was a unit chairman. We had several meetings with him. I recall we agreed to revitalise all the depots that were comatose. I am so surprised today that he failed to advise the government that first things should be done first. They are trying to throw the country into anarchy, trying to put a lot of people into perpetual suffering. 
For the marketers, they have nothing to lose. Under this situation, if I have two trucks of fuel in my station, I will close down. I will close down to know where the country is going. It is the common people that will suffer it. That is my own concern; not the marketers who own filling stations. If a truck of fuel sells for N10 million tomorrow, when we buy, we add our gain. But government should think about the people who put them in power. Government should build a platform whereby people who put them in power will not suffer. This is the angle I’m going. The federal government is playing the western world’s directive. The International Monetary Fund, IMF said that West African countries should remove fuel subsidy. Ghana has done it but they did not consider the fact that Ghana’s economy came to be. They failed to understand that Nigeria is peculiar from other West African countries. So to me, we don’t have a problem as marketers, but what of the common people, who are the end users? 
I earlier said that the removal of fuel subsidy is not the problem, but how to go about it. First of all, all the refineries in the country should be reactivated to their full capacity. When these things are done, government cannot even announce that they are removing subsidy, they will tactically back out and nobody will know. If as a marketer staying in Enugu State, I get my supply from the Enugu petrol depot, I do not need to add extra cost on the pump price per litre while selling in my filling station. But the problem is that most depots in the country are not working. The current situation lies on the fact that a marketer in Maiduguri goes to Lagos to get fuel, a marketer in Enugu, likewise those in Damaturu because Gombe depot is not working, Jos depot is not working, Markudi, Aba and Enugu depots as well. So if you visit the Port Harcourt and Lagos refineries, most of the marketers are there struggling to get fuel and go back to their various states to sell. They will add the cost of transportation and other expenses on the pump price per litre. For instance, if the marketer in Enugu incurs about N200, 000 as cost of transportation of a truck of fuel from Lagos to Enugu, and the marketer in Maiduguri uses up to N600, 000 to lift a truck of fuel from Lagos to Maiduguri, they will eventually transfer this cost to the pump price per litre. It is the common people who are the end users that bear the burden. 
In the western world, if you deregulate any industry, you don’t need to monitor such industry. Why should the federal government deregulate and at the same time trying to say that PPPRA should monitor to ensure it does not go out of hand. Who is fooling who? President Goodluck Jonathan may be a good president, but the issue remains that those around him should have advised him that this is not the right time to deregulate. If they say it is to prevent the cabal that has been in control of our subsidy gains, it is better to bring them to book. Where is the recovered Abacha loot? Since the federal government deregulated diesel over four years now, where is the money made out of it? Okonjo-Iweala, who is now saying if we do not deregulate today, Nigeria will crumble, when she was a minister under Obasanjo’s regime, she insisted that she should be paid in dollars. She loves Nigeria so much, but was paid in dollars. She has come back again to play the script of her masters, the western world, that is to say that subsidy must be removed. What they are implementing in the country is the western world’s programme, not even Nigeria’s agenda.
 
As one of the nation’s marketers of petroleum products, what can you say the last subsidised products brought into the country?
There are some fuel products that the federal government has subsidised already that are yet to be sold off. I am too sure that the government paid for the last quota that will last up to April 2012. So why should we now start selling fuel at N150 per litre and above. If the government is very responsible to the people they are ruling, they should be able to monitor the sale of PMS, and insist that subsidy has been removed for the quota now on sale, to compel marketers to sell at the normal price of N65 per litre until such a time.
 
Supposing the removal of subsidy comes to stay, how do you think Nigerians will react?
There may be anarchy in the country. I am telling you the nation may turn to anarchy.

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