The lingering scarcity of Kerosene in major cities across the country has continued to rage on even as price of the commodity leaps by a whooping 140%, investigations have revealed.
Findings by daily Sun revealed that as at Tuesday, June 28, most retail outlets in Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu, Aba, Jos, Kaduna, and Abeokuta were out of stock while the few ones selling hiked the price from N500 to N1, 200 for four litres (a gallon) of kerosene, translating to about 55 percent increase.
This was even as cooking gas price hit an all time high of N4, 000 from the initial price of N2, 300 for 12.5kg cylinder size.
Despite the deregulation of kerosene, most marketers suspended importation, a reason that could have been responsible for the current scarcity.
Further investigation by Daily Sun showed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) remains the only importer of kerosene at the moment.
The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), had in January, increased the price of household kerosene from N50 to N83 per litre, a price it equally maintained in a statement made available to the media in the second quarter of this year.
The agency stated that the N83 per litre price applied only to NNPC outlets. Regardless, none of the NNPC retail outlets sold kerosene at the approved price of N83 per litre in the first and second quarter which will end tomorrow.
