Mele Kyari, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, has, on behalf of the organization, apologised to Nigerians over the four-month fuel scarcity difficulties faced by Nigerians.
Kyari made this appeal on Tuesday during his guest appearance on Channels Television’s special programme “The 2023 Verdict.”
He assured Nigerians that the NNPC was working round the clock to resolve the issue, promising that the cause of the scarcity would soon be sorted out and normalcy restored as soon as possible.
“I apologise for the situation. On behalf of all of us, the stakeholders in the oil and gas industry, definitely, not surely exclusive. Having said this, it is unfortunate. It’s a glitch; we are responsible for [resolving] this glitch. We will resolve this,” he said.
Kyari promised that within the next one week, Nigerians will begin to see a major turnaround as efforts to address this scarcity have reached top gear. “Within the next one week, you will see a change,” he said.
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He, however, didn’t promise the elimination of queues at petrol stations nationwide but promised that massive changes would be felt in the coming week.
“I’m not saying that you’re going to have zero queues within the next one week,” he explained. “No, I can’t guarantee that because a number of things are out of our control.”
Kyari linked the current crisis to the imbalance created by market forces but promised that once the supply issues are aggressively sorted out, most of the queues would start to fade away. In his view, the country is going to see a significant change in the next one week compared to the situation at present.
He rebuffed conspiracy theorists who linked the fuel scarcity to the handiwork of any organization or individual, giving assurance that the NNPC will bring succour and relief to the Nigerian people.
“We have no benefit in doing this. We are families. We are members and part of this community. We are very proud of this country.
“We would like this country to prosper. We don’t want Nigerians to suffer, and of course, as a matter of condition, we don’t think that anyone should go through this thing,” he said.
The NNPC boss revealed one of the strategic solutions the organisation has embarked on to sort out this crisis is increasing supply from the 63 million litres per day as of January.
“We know that the solution is excess supply. Once we are able to do excess supply across the country, across locations, you are going to resolve this issue, which is exactly what we’re doing now,” he said.
“We’re ramping up the evacuation today. On a daily basis, we are doing more than 70 million litres into the market against the regular evacuation of up to 63–64 million litres.
“This will work, and we believe that the ease that we’re seeing in many locations today—I don’t want to cite specific locations, but I know that we’re seeing ease across the country. This is easing up.”
