The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu has said the current fuel scarcity being experienced across the country will be over in the next two days, stressing that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has increased supply of the product across the country.
Kachikwu gave the assurance yesterday during a tour of petrol stations in Abuja.He stated that the NNPC deploys 300 truckloads of fuel to Abuja on a daily basis.
He said, “We have enough coming in. Obviously the two days of strike hit us very badly but we are flooding in, getting an average of 300 trucks a day into Abuja; it’s going to take a bit of while for the queues to finish but we are hoping that between the next one-two days we should have the queues all disappear because we are continuing to pump in, while a lot of the stations are open 24 hours a day.
“I apologise to Nigerians for all the pains; nobody wants to see people spend two hours on the fuel queue.”
Noting that President Muhammadu Buhari is bothered about the current situation of fuel scarcity being experienced across the country, the Minister said, “talks had begun with the CBN to help major oil marketers in Nigeria access foreign exchange to import petrol into the country.”
“We are doing everything we can; NNPC is taking the whole nation on its shoulders while majors are really not bringing in product; but we are working long term solutions to majors to now begin to go back to importation lane and be able to service their own outlets rather than us servicing our outlets, independents, majors and servicing everybody; its a lot of wear and tear on our capabilities as a status.
“Long term obviously we have got to systemically look at how do you prepare this nation in circumstances where there are emergencies to be able to respond; we are obviously not getting that as well as we should,” he said.
