New Telegraph

Petrol scarcity won’t frustrate elections, NNPCL tells Tinubu

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has said that the scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise called petrol or fuel, is not intended to affect or frustrate the forthcoming general election. Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO), NNPCL, Mallam Mele Kyari, stated this yesterday while speaking during an NTA’s ‘Good Morning Nigeria’ programme monitored by New Telegraph. According to him, it was out of context and impossible to link petrol scarcity to the elections. He assured that NNPCL was doing everything in its power to control the situation.

He recalled that the petrol scarcity started in 2022. He attributed the scarcity to glitches, adding that once there is a challenge of such a nature, it is always a cyclical thing. He said the nation experienced three days of redundancy in terms of petroleum products, adding that once there is a glitch that extends longer than three days, another three weeks is required to stabilise it. He lamented that it is a nightmare waiting to happen irrespective of who does what, and whatever causes the three-day glitch. Kyari said: “I do not think anybody sits down to orchestrate that there should be scarcity so that it will impact elections and so on. “I don’t think it happens that way if it is so. But it is not true because the reality is that these glitches actually started early in 2022.

“It has nothing to do with this election period. Once you have a challenge of this nature, it is a cyclical thing. Once you have this challenge, they continue to come up, and then once you have arbitrage issues, you have this glitch. “Today, our redundancy in terms of petroleum products supply is just three days in this country. “There is no benefit in it. No one would do this and I can tell you this very clearly that there is no one issue, being the direct report to Mr. President, there is no one issue that bothers him like this. There is no briefing that I do for the president that he does not mention.” The 2023 presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, while speaking at a recent APC presidential campaign rally at the MKO Abiola International Stadium in Abeokuta, alleged that the fuel scarcity and naira redesign were artificially created to sabotage the election.

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