By Ezrel Tabiowo
Abuja
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu yesterday vowed not to resign from office over current fuel crisis in the country, insisting he has a lot of work to do in the sector.
Kachickwu made the declaration yesterday while appearing before the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream).
He was reacting to calls by some chieftains of the governing All Progressives Congress, including national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who castigated the minister over his comment that the scarcity would end in May.
Kachikwu said: “All those planning to come to Abuja for a protest should save their fuel, I am not going to resign, I have a lot of work to do.’’
He said: “I do apologise if a comment I made jocularly with my friends in the press about being a magician offends some Nigerians, it wasn’t meant to be. It is a side jocular issue and I did go ahead to explain what needed to be done. I didn’t intend to create this kind of hyperbole that it did.
“Let me 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. If anybody’s sensitivities were offended by that, I totally apologise. I am a very humble person.”
Giving explanations on the way out of the lingering fuel scarcity, the minister said, based on plans already put in place by the Ministry and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the sufficient availability of the product will be achieved latest by the second week of April.
According to him, the corporation has all hands on deck towards ensuring that the nightmare of long queues being experienced at filling stations, is addressed in good time to alleviate the sufferings of Nigerians as quickly as possible.
He disclosed that the situation on ground came into being as a result of the inability of major oil marketers to fulfil their own quota of fuel importation, following lack of access to foreign exchange.
This, he said forced the NNPC to be 100% importer of fuel consumption needs for the country since November last year with inadequate capacity.
“The ratio of supply of the all important product to Nigerians in meeting their consumption needs through importation, was 52% to 48% between NNPC and Independent marketers before, which later moved to 68 to 32% and now 100% for NNPC alone as a result of refusal of Independent marketers to continue with the arrangement on account of their difficulties in getting foreign exchange.”
He, however, said as soon as the foreign exchange problem was solved, a ratio of 47 to 53 % supply chain, had been worked out for them and the NNPC, adding that “with that arrangement, NNPC will go back to its status of supplier of last resort and not supplier of the entire consumption needs of the country.”
Kachikwu said a strategic reserve of about two million tons of fuel was being put on ground by the corporation to permanently prevent reoccurrence of product scarcity.
“We are currently working very collaboratively with the oil majors; that is upstream producing companies, to see how they can sell us foreign exchange for the naira components they would require for their local operations.
“When they bring in the foreign exchange, they will give us the first call. We are using that module to cover up the foreign exchange gap. We are also working collaboratively with the CBN within the limits of what it can tolerate to give us a little bit of foreign exchange.
“We are also setting up, for the first time, strategic reserves for the first time in this country of close to about two million tons to provide products always. That would be operational as from May. It would contain between five to seven cargoes of fuel as a reserve.
“Once we do that we should be away from the incessant fuel crisis that we have. We expect that between now and about April 6 to 7, the fuel queues will disappear.”
