Where Is The Petroleum Minister?

The current spate of fuel scarcity, which started like a joke about
three weeks ago, is about to hit the one month target with no apparent
end in sight. If anything, petrol is getting scarcer by the day all
over the country, with prices ranging from N150 to N500 per litre
depending on the location around Nigeria.

Official sources blamed this on the activities of speculators,
hoarders and saboteurs; a story we have always been told since fuel
scarcity became a normal part of our lives from the early 1990's.

Petrol dealers apparently sensed that the continued lowering of crude
oil prices in the international market could lead to a drastic cut in
the official price of petrol and thus decided to hoard the stock at
hand.
Things were not helped by the federal government's delay in paying
the N413 billion owed importers of the product.

PHOTO: President Muhammadu Buhari leaving Nigeria for Malta, on
Thursday, November 26, 2015, to participate in the 2015 Common-wealth
Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM)


Though the federal government sent officials of the Directorate of
Petroleum Resources (DPR) to indentify the hoarders and dispense their
products free of charge to the public, this has proved incapable of
easing off the scarcity because DPR can hardly do much in terms of
coverage.

The effort of the federal government to get the National Assembly to
approve the N465.5 billion supplementary to enable it pay the
importers was a step taken only when the scarcity had started biting,
a fallout of the generally slow and non-proactive attitude of this
regime to governance in general.

We call on the National Assembly to jettison partisan nit-picking and
approve the fund to enable Nigerians have a smooth Christmas and New
Year season devoid of fuel scarcity and its attendant mass suffering
and over-the roof personal spending on energy.

With the onset of the dry season and the sudden drop of electricity
supply below 3,000 megawatts, Nigerians need easily available and
affordable fuel to cope with the heat and conduct their businesses
this end of year season.

Even as the subsidy fund is eagerly awaited, we call, once again, on
the federal government to come forward with its holistic economic
blueprint, especially as it affects efforts to ensure stability in the
petroleum energy sector.

With President Muhammadu Buhari as the substantive Petroleum Resources
Minister and Dr Ibe Kachikwu, a respected technocrat in the sector as
the Minister of State, Nigerians are full of hopes that the perennial
problems bedeviling the sector will be brought under control. We
expect the so-called "cabals" in the sector be smashed and Nigerians
freed from their stranglehold. We do not want this banality of
business as usual.

The ongoing fuel scarcity is a personal burden for President Buhari.
Nigerians are eagerly waiting for him to come forward with permanent
solutions.

-Vanguard