Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) says the government is working hard to put an end to petrol scarcity before the end of May.
At the meeting of the council on Wednesday, short-term and long-term plans were made to revamp the nation’s refineries before the end of 2017 and also put an end to importation of petrol by 2019.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Ibe Kachikwu had before now announced that fuel lines will end by April 7th, amid significant public pressure. He made the announcement after apologizing for his “magician” comment and proceeded to explain the country’s fuel scarcity.
The Council’s statement is coming amidst scarcity of petrol in the oil-rich nation, a situation that had led to loss of man-hour at fuel service stations across the nation.
After the meeting of the Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, reporters were told that all refineries in the nation would resume production fully by 2017.
There are also plans to ensure that fuel importation will be reduced by 60 per cent by 2018 before a total end to it by 2019.
In the short term, however, the Council said petrol supply would be available before the end of May, with Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries supporting supplies.
The Council also sympathised with Nigerians on the hardship they face in long queues to get petrol at fuel service stations, blaming it on sabotage and fuel marketers who the Council claimed wanted to make quick money.
The Council also directed the Department of Petroleum Resources to enforce correct pump prices, promising that 1,200 trucks of Premium Motor Spirit also referred to as petrol would be delivered daily to end scarcity.
The Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr Babtunde Fashola, who spoke on the power outages, blamed the situation on insufficient gas supply and vandalism of the Forcados Plants which resulted in a drop in power from 5,000 megawatts to 3,000 megawatts.
Mr Fashola further expressed confidence that the ministry would meet a target of 10,000 megawatts set by the president for 2019.
