THE Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, has said the fuel scarcity being experienced in the country has nothing to do with the 2023 general elections.
Kyari stated this when he appeared on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) ‘Good Morning Nigeria’ program on Thursday, February 2.
He explained that the shortage was not a deliberate attempt to influence the forthcoming general elections, noting that the crisis began in 2022 and that arbitrage has significantly impacted the product’s scarcity.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
Kyari stressed that it is not true that anyone would intentionally create a scarcity to impact elections and that such a notion is out of context and impossible.
According to him, the current redundancy of petroleum products supply in Nigeria is only three days and that any glitch extending longer than three days takes another three weeks to stabilize.
He emphasized that the NNPCL is doing everything possible to avoid such glitches from happening in the nearest future and that no one would intentionally create such a situation.
Kyari also stated that the petrol scarcity issue is a major concern for President Muhammadu Buhari and is frequently discussed in their briefings.
He observed that various challenges, including logistics, greed, cross-border problems, and international market situations, contribute to scarcity.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, had, during his rally in Ogun State last week, claimed that the petrol scarcity and the naira redesign policy were attempts to sabotage the elections.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has also expressed concerns that the ongoing scarcity might affect its logistics for the elections.
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