Fuel scarcity to hit Nigeria in 3 weeks; as Buhari sacks NNPC Board of Directors
Nigeria will probably be hit by fuel shortages in three weeks as the government is reportedly cash-strapped to pay for gasoline subsidies. This is as President Muhammadu Buhari, Friday, sacked the entire board of directors of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) with immediate effect.
The directive to that effect was conveyed in a letter signed Friday, June 26, by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Barr. Danladi Kifasi.
In it the President thanked members of the dissolved board for their services to the nation.
However, the Chief Executive Officer of Lagos-based Seplat Petroleum Development Co. Plc, Mr Austin Avuru, has said the country will be hit by another round of petrol scarcity in three weeks time, barely two weeks after normalization of supplies to the Nigerian masses.
“In three weeks we will be back to scarcity because we simply don’t have the money to pay for the subsidy,” Austin Avuru, chief executive officer of Lagos-based Seplat, said at a conference at the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE.
Nigeria almost ground to a halt last month during the country’s worst fuel shortage in a decade due to a dispute between petroleum products marketers and the then outgoing government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. The shortages left service stations closed, aircraft grounded, and businesses unable to operate.
A lack of oil refining capacity means Nigeria subsidizes gasoline imports and suffers frequent fuel shortages even though it is Africa’s biggest crude oil producer of about two million barrels a day. President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office on May 29, said this week his government is facing severe financial strain from a Treasury that’s “virtually empty” and billions of dollars in debt.
Some have said that the President intends to oversee the Petroleum Ministry directly and have interpreted the sacking of the NNPC Board as a move in that direction.
