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Tell us
about IPMAN and your activities?
I am the Secretary of IPMAN –
Independent Petroleum Marketers
Association of Nigeria. It is a national
body for all independent marketers and
we have our headquarters at Abuja. We
have a set of national officers that
control and deal directly with PPMC at
the national level. We have officials
for each depot. There are about 21
depots in the country. Of course the
association is in each of the depots.
There are 5 zones – the south west, mid
west, with Benin as the headquarters,
made up of Benin and Warri depots, east
with headquarters in Port Harcourt.
There is south west which has 5 depots
with Mosimi as headquarters, then we
have the north east and the north west.
So each of these zones have their own
zonal exco. In Lagos the exco is based
in Ejigbo. There is the Chairman as
usual and about 9 officials. Basically,
what we do is that we take care of the
interests of the independent marketers
in terms of the loading of products at
Ejigbo, sourcing of products and the
general welfare of members. We also deal
with the regulatory agencies like the
Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR),
Petroleum Products Price Regulatory
Authority (PPPRA), and Lagos State
Environmental Protection
Agency(LASEPA).LASEPA is now trying to
force themselves into the industry. This
is the structure of the association.
According to your explanation, it seems
that all you do is just going to the
depot and collect products. My first
question is this, does every member of
IPMAN own a filling station?
Yes. Maybe I should explain how one
can become a member. For anyone to
become a member of IPMAN, you must own
at least onefilling station. That
station must be licensed by DPR. There
are two types of licenses that we have –
Storage and Sales licenses issued by DPR
and this is the first stage. The second
stage is the Bulk Purchase Agreement
that the individual marketer has with
PPMC. That allows you to take products
directly from PPMC. If you have just the
Storage and Sales license, like if you
have a station along Ikorodu road here
now and you put Toba’s Petroleum and you
are licensed with DPR alone, you will
not have access to products from PPMC.
So you have to go for the next stage
which will allow you to have direct
purchase from PPMC. Thus, any company
that ,one, has a station, two, the
station is licensed by DPR and three,
has a bulk purchase agreement with PPMC,
automatically is a member of the
association and PPMC makes it mandatory
for any licensed marketer to be a member
of the association. I think it is for
reasons of control because we have over
6,000 independent marketers in the
country which if PPMC should be dealing
with on an individual basis will be a
problem. The association now represents
the interests of the independent
marketers with PPMC, DPR and others. |
