The Federal Government, on Monday, blamed the current petrol scarcity on the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan which it accused of not making adequate provision for subsidy.
Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, made the revelation to State House correspondents after an emergency meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) .He said:
"What I will be telling Nigerians is that what we met on ground is such that we are paying for the sins of the last administration. I am being 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, N522 billion was for arrears of fuel subsidy which was incurred as far back as August last year."One of the reasons for the fuel scarcity was the inability of the last government to make adequate provision for fuel subsidy."We do face some other logistic problems but majorly we are paying for the sins of the last administration."
On the solution to the crisis, hesaid
"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 had stopped importing for a couple of months."If you see any fuel anywhere today, it is imported by the NNPC."We also inherited the vandalisation of the pipelines which has made it impossible for us to even transport the fuel. 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 vandalised and the gridlock in Lagos. It takes about five days for anybody to take fuel with tanker in Lagos."As of two days ago, this matter has been resolved. The Mosimi pipeline has been secured and it has led to the improvement in the distribution."
