While appearing before the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) to explain what provoked the current fuel crisis that has lasted for two weeks, the minister said that he would not resign his appointment as demanded by some aggrieved Nigerians. “I learnt that some people are planning to come to Abuja to protest that I should resign, I want to appeal to them to please save their fuel. I am not going to resign because I still have work to do,” he said.
According to him, he did not accept to be Minister of Petroleum in order to create scarcity. Different groups, including the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South-South, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and some Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have called for the minister’s resignation. Kachikwu had, last week Wednesday, told journalists that the fuel scarcity rocking the country would linger till May and that he is not a magician to end the crisis. His statement angered many Nigerians in the face of long queues and product scarcity. The minister stated that he meant no harm with his statement about the fuel crisis.
His words: “Let me just digress; I share the pains of Nigerians, I feel that pain every day when I walk the streets. On Easter day, I was in Lagos monitoring fuel distribution at the depots; I have given 24 hours attention to the problems.
“I have continued to work with one sole purpose which is that every problem must have a solution and I think that is the reason I was picked. “I do apologise for the comment that I made jocularly with my friends in the press about being a magician and it offended Nigerians; it was not meant to be, it was a side jocular issue. I did go on to explain what needed to be done. I did not know that it would create the kind of hyperbole (exaggeration) that it did.
“Let me first admit that I am not a typically experienced politician; I am a technocrat: I came to work. Some of the phraseologies that I may use, while being acceptable in the arena in which I play, obviously will not be acceptable in the public political arena. So if anybody’s sensibilities were offended by those, I totally apologise.”
Kachikwu gave assurances that the current acute fuel scarcity in the country, resulting in long queues at the filling stations would ease, with effect from the first week of April. He stated that by April 7th, the scarcity would near being over.
The Senate committee had, on Monday, summoned the minister to come and brief it on the situation on ground, after carrying out on-the-spot assessment of the petrol crisis in major filling stations within the Abuja metropolis. He was required by the lawmakers to provide detailed explanations on the cause of the present crisis and also highlight measures being taken by the Federal Government, not just to address the prevailing situation, but also to proffer a lasting solution to the problem.
Kachikwu went further to tell the committee that infrastructural deficits, vandalism, cabalism, black marketing and hoarding, among others, were factors principally responsible for the unending fuel scarcity being experienced in the country at the moment. On the infrastructural deficits, he explained that since the NNPC undertook the burden of importing 100 per cent of national fuel consumption, the corporation had been grappling with the problem of storage, because it did not have adequate storage facilities to stockpile for national consumption.
He also said that vandalism of oil pipelines had been a major problem because rather than concentrate on how to improve on the volume of oil production, government had to find a means of fixing the destroyed facilities.
He, however, said that he and his team of workers in the ministry and the NNPC were working hard to tackle the problem both in the short run and longterm basis. One of the strategies, according to him, is that his leadership was working hard to provide a strategic reserve of 2,000,000 tonnes of petrol with the intention to finally putting an end to periodic fuel scarcity in the country.
The minister also stated that the latest arrangement between the NNPC and independent marketers would be at the ratio of 47 to 53 per cent supply of the national consumption, noting that the previous arrangement was 48 to 52 and later 32 to 68 from the independent marketers and the NNPC, respectively before NNPC started supplying 100 per cent after the removal of subsidy late last year.
He also said that subsequently, 150 per cent of national consumption would be deposited into storage tanks, adding that meaningful solution to fuel crisis would be provided when refineries were working in optimum capacity.
Kachikwu said the search for refineries’ full operations had led to several advertisements being run for individuals and private sector to take over the operations of the refineries and consequently expand their capacities.
He also said that a plan was already in the offing to make Chevron take over Warri Refinery and another plan for Shell to take over Kaduna Refinery. He explained that it was not the intention of the NNPC to solely take over importation of petrol, but rather an action forced on it by emerging circumstances in the economy. The minister, however, said that the NNPC was currently working on an arrangement with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that would assist the marketers to access foreign exchange to import fuel.
He lamented that Nigeria was one of the very few countries where citizens willfully destroyed pipelines meant to serve them, a trend he said made the NNPC to continue to grapple with the huge burden of providing fuel for the citizenry.
He also promised to embrace the advice given by the committee to employ the services of members of Civil Defence Corps to accompany petrol tankers to intended petrol stations to avert cases of diversion. His words: “The country is no longer paying subsidy and it is saving us a cumulative of over N1 trillion in the one year period. The major issue, however, is that the inability of the marketers to import products became a major challenge. “Some of them owed arrears of liabilities and going forward they didn’t have money to import the product.
What that meant is that by late August, we moved from an expected obligation of NNPC to bring in about 50 per cent consumption of the product, which was about 45 million to 50 million litres, to a point where we had to cover a 100 per cent platform. Nobody was bringing in product, consumption was still static, and we needed to cover that gap, without an increase in crude allocation…. “That gap is what we see in some of the cyclical queues that we have, which is about 80 per cent of the problem.”
Earlier, the chairman of the committee, Barau Jibrin (APC, Kano), said that the lawmakers had allowed the executive enough time to study the industry and come up with sustainable solution to the problem so that Nigerians would feel the positive impact of this government of change.
