The Federal Government has blamed the lingering fuel scarcity in the country on the “sins” of former president Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Addressing state house correspondents after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Monday, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information, said the immediate-past government failed to make adequate provision for fuel subsidy.
He added that pipelines
vandalised under Jonathan made it impossible for fuel to be transported to different distribution points in the country.
“One of the reasons for the fuel scarcity is the inability of the last government to make adequate provision for fuel subsidy,” he said. “We do face some other logistics problems; but mainly, we are paying for the sins of the last administration.
“I will be telling Nigerians that what we met on ground is such that we are paying for the sins of the last administration. I am very serious. You remember that about two weeks ago, we had to go to the National Assembly for a supplementary budget of N674 billion.
“Of that figure, N522billion was for arrears of fuel subsidy which was incurred as far back as August last year.
“The solution is what you have seen us doing. The first thing we have done now is to make sure that unlike before when the marketers used to import the major percentage of the fuel. NNPC has been involved in importation, because some of the marketers have stopped importing for a couple of months.
“If you see fuel anywhere today, it is imported by NNPC. In tanks today, we have 14 days’ reserve and off tank we have 10 days’ reserve.
“The issue is not non-availability of the product; it is the distribution, because of pipelines that have been vandalized. We also inherited the vandalisation of the pipelines which has made it impossible for us to even transport the fuel.
“As at two days ago, this matter has been resolved. The Mosinmi pipeline has been secured and it has led to improvement in the distribution.”
-NAN
