By Bode Olagoke
Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that the real cause of the ongoing fuel scarcity across the country was the looting of the $12 billion domestic gas fund as well as the government’s failure to pay fuel subsidy and cost of interests on bank loans to oil marketers, thus making it impossible for them to begin another round of importation of refined petroleum products.
In a statement issued in Dubai yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the PDP and the Jonathan administration decided to divert attention from those problems by accusing the opposition of being responsible for the scarcity.
It described the PDP accusation as “a most laughable and irresponsible statement by a sitting government that is always so eager to blame everyone but itself for the nation’s woes.”
The APC recalled that the self-styled Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had, in February, promised to pay all subsidies owed to the marketers then in the sum of N264 billion, along with the accrued interest.
APC said, however, that the failure to meet this obligation has made it impossible for the oil marketers, who are being owed heavily, to finance another round of products importation.
“The truth is that this profligate government has run Nigeria aground, and the oil sector, whether upstream or downstream, has particularly suffered hugely. The quantity of petroleum products that was imported has almost been fully consumed, without fresh products being brought in to augment supplies that have now fallen well below re-order level.
“The implication is that in addition to worsening power supply, crumbling prices of oil at the international market, weakening Naira and unprecedented corruption, Nigerians — who routinely provide their own electricity to power their homes and business — now have to face another round of government-imposed hardship with the ongoing fuel scarcity.”
It said the fuel crisis would not have reached the stage “it is in now had the $12 billion domestic gas project fund not been looted under President Jonathan’s watch.”
This is because, with the project being executed, many vehicles, cooking stoves and generators would have been converted to use gas to reduce the importation of PMS, diesel and kerosene, and gas would have been available to fire the gas turbines at power stations, while more power would have been delivered to the national grid.
The APC accused Jonathan of sabotaging the domestic gas project started by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, with the $12 billion cash call provisions for gas development for domestic power generation looted under Jonathan’s watch.
“They (Nigerians) must be wondering when the APC took over the running of the NNPC, when the APC took charge of subsidy payment and why the opposition should become the easy scapegoat of an ineffectual, clueless, incompetent, visionless and thieving government. Absurdity has no other meaning.”