Independent marketers blamed as fuel scarcity persist in Nigeria

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Hopes that worsening fuel queues experienced in Abuja and some other cities may soon wear out, was on Wednesday dimmed as the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipreye Slyva again attributed the challenges associated with fuel supply to the forces of deregulation and distribution chain system largely controlled by independent oil marketers.

He said the Federal Government, through the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation NNPC Limited, has ensured adequate supplies of fuel products but marketing outlets bent on shortchanging the populace by hiking the price are largely responsible for the crisis.

Sylva’s clarifications came on Wednesday, shortly after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided by President Muhammadu Buhari before his departure to Senegal for the IDA summit.

His explanations came just as the Federal Executive Council equally approved the award of contracts and procurement for the provision of a conference hostel facility in Yenagoa adjacent to the Nigerian content towers for the sum of N22 billion.

The project was awarded to Megastar technical construction company with a construction timeframe of 24 months.

Reacting to the fuel queues, he said, “Of course, I was expecting that question. Frankly, it is not a supply issue, as you can also confirm. So it’s not from us. But you know When you have an arbitrary opportunity, people will tend to take advantage of it. These are some of the fallouts of the subsidy regime.

“If you look at it, there are no queues when you leave Abuja, in most places, only in the Abuja metropolis you continue to have these queues. Is it that there is less supply to Abuja than to the rest of the country? It is not so. It is because if you go out of Abuja, they can afford to probably sell at higher prices. And I’m sure a lot of you must be buying at higher prices, within Abuja, because of the watchful eyes of the federal government, they cannot sell at those prices.

“So it’s not a very attractive market for them. I think these are all the things that we might have to be dealing with for a while until we’re able to fully deregulate.

“But that actually is the problem, it’s not a supply problem, the country is well supplied as it is. NNPC has a very good supply. So it is not a problem from us, but it is the marketers. But we are engaging the marketers and will continue to engage them. In fact, before now NATO said, Oh, because diesel prices were now going up. And of course, you know that diesel is deregulated already.

“So, because diesel prices have gone up, the cost of their moving product has also gone up and therefore, we must try to do something about the bridging cost. We did that with them, we were able to respond to that and they were able to do something for NATO.