03 August 2012, Sweetcrude, LAGOS – THE Chairman, Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, Chief Dapo Abiodun, has said the oil marketers were yet to be paid their subsidy cliams, five days after the government promised them the payment in order to avert their threat to boycott fuel imports.
According to him, they were yet to receive the Sovereign Debt Notes from the Debt Management Office, DMO, for the payment.
But, he said many of the marketers had gotten payment advice from the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, for the debt notes.
“The information we are getting is that the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has stopped it,” he stated.
Okonjo-Iweala had last Thursday directed the DMO to pay the marketers all verified subsidy claims in a bid to avert scarcity of petroleum products that could have resulted from the strike by the marketers to protest the non-payment.
She had said the claims would be settled as soon as the PPPRA provided the supporting Sovereign Debt Notes.