Timipre Sylva, the Minister of State for Petroleum, attributed the resurfacing fuel queues in Abuja to marketers.
Addressing State House correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday July 6, Sylva absolved the Federal Government of any responsibility for the fuel queues in the nation’s capital, pointing out that NNPC has sufficient supply of the product.
According to Sylva, “Frankly, it is not a supply issue, as you can also confirm. So it’s not from us. But you know When you have an arbitrage opportunity, people will tend to take advantage of it. These are some of the fallouts of the subsidy regime.”
He also mentioned that the queues are specific to Abuja due to the discrepancy in pricing, stating, “If you look at it, there are no queues when you leave Abuja, in most places, only in the Abuja, metropolis, you continue to have these queues. So is it that there is less applied to Abuja, than to the rest of the country? It is not so. It is because if you go out of Abuja, they can afford to probably sell at higher prices.”
Sylva further emphasized that the issue is not a supply problem, with the country being well-supplied and NNPC having a very good supply. He attributed the problem to the marketers and assured that the government is engaging with them to address the situation.