The Senate Committee on Petroleum Downstream has blamed the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and marketers over short supply of the petroleum products in the country.
The committee chairman, Senator Kabiru Marafa, stated this yesterday in Gusau, during an oversight assignment in the state on fuel situation in the country.
Marafa, who was accompanied by another member of the committee, Senator Abdullahi Danbaba, said the inspection was part of the assignment given to the committee by Senate President, Bukola Saraki.
“I’ve directed all members of this committee to go back to their constituencies to investigate the problem at the grassroots, so that we take approximate measures to address the scarcity. “We visited NNPC zonal depot in Gusau to find out the quantity of fuel supply to the depot, and we noticed short supply of the commodity. We are going to present our findings to the senate. It is very disturbing to see the suffering faced by people due to fuel scarcity in the country.
“We question the NNPC over this issue because the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the NNPC, Maikanti Baru, said they had doubled the quantity of daily supply of the product, but it is not available to the public. Another unfortunate thing is the attitude of our filling stations’ owners who sell this commodity to the public; they are involved in one or two malpractices. In fact, out of the filling stations we visited, only two complied with the government directives in this regard,” he said.
