The Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, has said Nigerians should have braced themselves for the ongoing fuel scarcity in some parts of the country.
The minister was speaking on Wednesday in Abuja while fielding questions from newsmen.
Madueke noted that the clamour by Nigerians for transparency and accountability in government’s dealings especially in the oil sector, was heeded by the Jonathan administration and its effect is the current drop in fuel supply.
She said: “We cannot eat our cakes and have it. We cannot keep calling out for transparency and accountability and pointing at corruption if we are not prepared to bear some of the hardship that will obviously come when you are trying to clean up a sector.”
“The verifications were being done; payments could not be made by Finance and I think they have said that severally, but the verifications have been done; payments are now being made and like I said the queues have actually begun to go down.”
The minister assured that there would be enough supplies for the festive season as the ministry had released petroleum products from its reserve.
“We too, on NNPC side we have pushed out a lot of our strategic reserve in a bid to ensure that people are not overtly put out in terms of fuel scarcity. And if not for this recent union issue I think it would have been completely alleviated, but I am sure that over the next few days it will die down completely.”
She stressed that: “We are doing everything we can on ground to ensure that this Christmas will be like last Christmas, as well.”
“Initially, the queues came out of the whole fuel subsidy issue and the fact of course that verifications of certain amounts and certain marketers’ claims were being made very stringently and this had to be done.”
Madueke further assured that the NNPC would continue to assist operators in the oil and gas sector in order to meet demands of the people.
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