Senate Urges FG to Lift Ban on Fuel Supply to Border Communities

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The Senate, yesterday, asked the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the National Security Adviser (NSA), to lift the subsisting restriction order placed on the supply of petroleum products to border communities.

The senate also urged the offices of the comptroller-general and NSA to intensify preventive and enforcement measures to combat smuggling of all kinds in the country.

The red chamber said the fuel subsidy removal by the federal government had substantially put paid to the smuggling of the products and therefore, should be allowed to circulate freely without restrictions.

The resolutions were taken following the consideration of a motion brought to its floor by Senator Solomon Adeola (APC Ogun West).

Adeola told his colleagues that the federal government had on November 6, 2019 through the Comptroller General of Customs directed that “no petroleum products is permitted to be discharged in any filling station within a radius of 20 kilometres to the border” of Nigeria.

He noted that the directive was to checkmate smuggling of Nigerian petroleum products, mostly premium motor spirit, PMS, to the neighbouring countries, where there was a thriving market for petrol, because of subsidy that was still on the product until May 29, 2023, when President Bola Tinubu announced its removal in his inaugural speech.

“This policy had brought untold hardship and major losses to businesses of the residents and indigenes of the affected border communities, which later made the Nigerian Customs to relax the policy slightly by given license to two or three petrol stations in each of the local government areas that borders these neighbouring countries.”

All the senators, who contributed to the motion, lamented the untold hardships being faced by the people living in border communities over restrictions on fuel as well as fertilizer, especially in the Northern part of the country.

The Senate, also, mandated its Committees on Customs and Excise, and National Security and Intelligence, when constituted, to ensure compliance and report back in four weeks for further legislative action.