The Lagos State Zonal Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has blamed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for the fuel scarcity.
Mr Tokunbo Korodo was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.
“The way I’m looking at it, the NNPC is the main cause of the fuel scarcity, other stakeholders are not complementing the efforts of the Federal Government while they claim they don’t have access to fuel.
“The Federal Government promised to make fuel available to them, why are they not giving it to them and sought it out for Nigerians?” he questioned.
Answering a question on why the depots were not loading, the NUPENG Chairman said: “Because they don’t have fuel.
“The Minister (Dr. Ibe Kachikwu), being the policy maker, is entitled to his opinion, but what I’ve seen so far today (Wednesday), the situation is not encouraging.
“Capital Oil, being the storage facility of the NNPC in Lagos, didn’t load fuel yesterday and even today, same with MRS.
“The Minister is just using Nigerians as experiment and we don’t need that,” he maintained.
Mr Korodo, however, advised the Minister of State for Petroleum to summon a stakeholders’ meeting in order to solve the issue of fuel scarcity.
“The Minister is supposed to have called a stakeholders’ meeting, especially those that have invested in the infrastructure in the oil and gas industry.
“Whatever the problem may be, they should sit down and resolve it because we can’t wait for gradual production of fuel,” he added.
The Minister of State for Petroleum on Tuesday apologised for remarks he made at the State House where he was quoted as saying he was not a magician.
Speaking at a meeting with the Senate Committee On Petroleum Downstream on Tuesday, Mr Kachikwu apologised for the comment which he said some found offensive.
“The issues we are encountering borders on forex and huge allocation that was allotted to the NNPC by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, for the first quarter.
“Before now, the NNPC had a quarter of between 45 and 55% and all of a sudden, it was jacked up to 78% leaving major marketers with 22%.
“The NNPC does not have the capacity to float the market with 78% while the 22% for the major marketers were stored as a result of the foreign exchange challenges,” he said.
The Energy Expert, however, expounded that the reason the NNPC got the 78% was that they were unable to meet up with the allocation given to major marketers.
“The Federal Government has forgotten that the major marketers don’t have the foreign exchange to bring up the product with the allocation given to them,” he added.
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