The Federal Government on Wednesday assured Nigerians that the current petrol scarcity being experienced in many parts of the country would be over before the end of the week.
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, stated this shortly after meeting with members of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria.
The meeting, held at the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Finance in Abuja, was also attended by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, representatives of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency and depot owners.
The minister said all the contentious issues with the marketers such as the foreign exchange rate differentials and payment of subsidy arrears had been addressed by the Federal Government.
She said while the details of the payment of the exchange rate differentials had been agreed, the government was already in the process of offsetting the N185bn debt owed the marketers with the issuance of the Sovereign Debt Note.
Okonjo-Iweala said, “In the next few days, the queues will dissipate; the situation will be addressed and everything will return to normal.
“At the Federal Executive Council meeting today, the issue was discussed in terms of pushing forward and making sure that things get back to normal.”
She said while briefing State House correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting that after proper briefings on the causes of the current scarcity of petrol and solutions, President Goodluck Jonathan gave specific instructions on how to deal with the matter because he wanted prompt and quick action to improve the situation as fast as possible..............after cut...............
She insisted that the scarcity was caused by a number of factors, including the depreciation of the naira.
Okonjo-Iweala said, “We discussed that (fuel scarcity) at the FEC because Mr. President wanted prompt and quick action to improve the situation as fast as possible. So, after the briefing and discussion on both the financial and physical side, what emanated is that this situation we hope will soon be resolved, because on the financial side, action has been taken and it is being implemented through the Ministry of Finance and the governor of the CBN.
“Let it be known that in December, we paid N320.2bn to marketers to settle their claims. We have now approved through the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency about N185bn to be paid to the marketers through sovereign debt notes, which is tantamount to having government guarantee that they will be paid.
“But the long and short of the matter is that the financial issue has been taken care of. The physical quantity is being loaded to be brought to Abuja and Lagos and other cities that are suffering so that hopefully tomorrow (Thursday) or next (Friday), we should begin to see these queues reduce as supplies arrive up to Saturday; we hope that Abuja will be cleared.
“So, the summary is that the FEC is concerned about the matter and discussed it; and beyond discussing it, the President gave instruction on how to deal with it so that physical quantities will be available and the queues will diminish so that by the end of the week, we will have a situation that is clarified.”
Emefiele, who also spoke with journalists after the meeting with the marketers, said the CBN had met with banks and oil marketers to resolve all the contending issues associated with credit facilities.
He stated that in the past one week, over $500m Letters of Credit had been opened by Deposit Money Banks on behalf of the marketers.
The governor called on marketers who were experiencing delays in getting their Letters of Credit to alert the CBN, promising to step in and ensure that the issue was resolved amicably.
Speaking on behalf of the oil marketers, the Executive Secretary, MOMAN, Mr. Obafemi Olawore, stated that the queues of desperate motorists at filling stations would ease off in the next few days, noting that the marketers had already moved 495 truckloads of fuel to Lagos, Abuja and environs.
He said, “On Monday, the major marketers moved 132 truckloads of fuel to Lagos, while 87 truckloads were moved to Abuja, and this is exclusive to the quantity moved by the NNPC, independent marketers and other marketers.
“On Tuesday, 137 trucks were moved to Lagos, while 139 trucks were moved to Abuja. You can see that the amount we moved to Abuja was far more than the quantity we moved on Monday. It normally takes between three and four days to transport fuel from Lagos to Abuja; hence we believe the queues will ease off by the weekend, latest.”
“Our actions are deliberate to ensure that the queues vanish and normalcy returns. I want to tell Nigerians that tougher days are over; normalcy is expected to return pretty soon.”
Olawore denied speculations in some quarters that the marketers were being sponsored by opposition parties to discredit the government, noting that the association was apolitical in its dealings with the government.
Meanwhile, the Department of Petroleum Resources has in the last one week shut 26 filling stations in Benue and Nasarawa states for selling petrol above the regulated pump price of N87 per litre, while also applying sanctions on other errant marketers.
The DPR Controller in charge of the two states, Abdullahi Isa, said this while speaking with journalists in his office in Makurdi on Wednesday.
Isa lamented that instead of getting about 20 trucks daily, Benue was now getting just four.
He warned that any filling station that failed to sell the product at the approved pump price and also indulged in other sharp practices such as hoarding would be sanctioned.
In Abuja, the scarcity of the product led to a fight among motorists who were on a queue at the Total filling station on Arab Road in Kubwa, a suburb settlement.
Trouble started around 2.30pm when the owner of a white Toyota Corolla car jumped the queue and made straight for the gate of the station.
His action outrage the hundreds of motorists on the queue, many of whom claimed to have spent over eight hours on the queue.
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