Failure of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) and the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) to resolve their grievances with Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) over the recall of sacked workers is responsible for the prolonged scarcity of petrol, Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Alliso-Madueke has said.
Allison-Madueke was speaking in Abuja on Wednesday during a session with reporters on the current fuel supply situation in the country, where she reiterated the resolve of the Federal Government to provide fuel to Nigerians, particularly in the Yuletide. She added that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) would continue pumping fuel into the system from its strategic reserve.
“Initially, the queues came out of the whole fuel subsidy issue and the fact that verifications of certain amounts and certain marketers’ claims were being made very stringently,” 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.”
She explained that the verifications have been done and payments are now being made so that the queues can gradually begin to thin out.
“We, too, on the NNPC side had pushed out a lot of our strategic reserve in a bid to ensure that people were not overtly put out in terms of fuel scarcity,” she added.
“And if not for this recent union issue, I think it could have been completely alienated but I am sure over the next few days, it will die down completely. We are doing everything we can on ground to ensure that this Christmas will not be like last Christmas.”
Despite the failure of a mediation move between NUPENG and SPDC at the instance of Minister of Labour, Mr. Emeka Wogu, Allison-Madueke assured that all issues would be resolved soon. She added also that the disagreement over payment of subsidy claims to petroleum marketers, which led to the initial crisis, had been sorted out.
“I think that the NNPC is doing everything it can to ensure that there is a level playing field for all interested marketers and operators. You will bear in mind that these are private sector operators and marketers, who actually set up their facilities to make a profit and what we do on government side is to support them in terms of the allocations and so on,” she said.
“For the first time in history, I must say that government has supported a much greater echelon of indigenous marketers and operators in terms of setting up and also allowing them access into the sector, which is what we intend to continue doing aggressively as we go over the next couple of years.”
