The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mal. Mele Kyari has clarified that the Petrol subsidy is truly gone and the Federal Government has not reintroduced it.
Kyari also explained that queues seen at petrol stations were due to challenges recorded about distribution of the petroleum products and not as a result of a lack of supply.
“No subsidy whatsoever. We are recovering our full cost from the products that we import. We sell to the market, and we understand why the marketers are unable to import.
“We hope that they do it very quickly and these are some of the interventions the government is doing. There is no subsidy.
‘We have seen in a very few states pockets of very low queues not unconnected with the road conditions.
“We’re seeing the number of blockades on our roads, products crossing from the southern depots to the northern part of the country, and it takes them much longer than they do before.
“They have to reroute the trucks around many locations for them to be able to reach, creating delays and some supply gaps. But that has been filled and we do not see such problems again, Kyari told State House Correspondents on Monday after a closed-door meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Kyari also stated that the full deregulation of the downstream sector has created ‘market competition’.
“You must have noticed that some fuel stations will reduce prices by two Naira and three Naira, so customers will naturally run to the places where you have that price reduction.
“That creates panic because those who don’t know why they are doing it will think that something wrong is happening.
“Supply is robust. We have over 1.4 billion litres of product, both marine and land. Also, there are no issues around delivering those products onto the land. So, there is no fear, nothing to bother about, he stated while adding that the NNPCL is liaising with the marketers to address the Forex challenges.
