Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, has lamented Nigeria’s continued inability to refine its crude oil, describing it as “shameful”.
He said when Nigeria begins to refine its own crude oil, “That ultimately will be the solution,” to the fuel scarcity, he said.
The minister said this at the senate’s investigative public hearing on the current scarcity of petrol on Thursday in Abuja.
Mr Kachiku, the Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Maikanti Baru, regulatory bodies, marketers and other stakeholders in the petroleum sector were summoned by the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) to explain the current crisis in the supply chain of Premium Motor Spirit, also known as petrol.
President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, had last Thursday directed the committee to cut short its recess and immediately convene a meeting with stakeholders in the petroleum sector over the current scarcity of petrol.
The Chairman of the committee, Senator Kabiru Marafa, had on Friday raised questions on the alleged payment of N26 per litre to subsidise the pump price of petrol, which the NNPC put its landing cost at N171 but sells at N145.
He had asked how the Federal Government, through the NNPC, was maintaining a pump price of N145 per litre when the landing cost of the commodity was now N171.
