Nigeria: Senate Probes Protracted Fuel Scarcity

Abuja — Worried about the endless queues at filling stations and the increasing difficulty in getting fuel across the country, the Senate Tursday expressed concerns over the protracted fuel scarcity rocking the country and consequently asked its committees on Petroleum Resources (Upstream and Downstream) to immediately launch an investigation into both the remote and immediate causes of the crisis.

The mandate was the fallout of a personal explanation given by the Deputy Senate Leader, Senator Abdul Ningi, after raising a point of order. During the explanation, Ningi said it was worrisome that the outbreak of fuel scarcity in the country in the past one month has refused to disappear while Nigerians continue to commute amid acute hardship in their quest to buy fuel everyday.

Ningi said the situation had attained a level where the Senate could no longer fold its hands without asking authorities concerned to furnish it with information on factors responsible for fuel scarcity. Furthermore, Ningi said Senate needed to know in clear terms whether fuel scarcity has now been designed to be part and parcel of Nigerians’ daily experience or not.

“We need to know whether fuel scarcity has come to stay. We need to know whether it has become part of our lives. We need to plan. By planning and talking about it, we are sensitising Nigerians to brace up for the impending issue of fuel scarcity whether it is going to be here permanently or temporarily.

“But we can’t know all these things until we hear from the experts. Therefore, my prayer is to ask the committee on downstream and upstream to come up with explanations next Tuesday through which Nigerians will know and plan their future. Otherwise, I think it is legally and morally wrong to keep silent about it, sweep it under the carpet and to continue to believe these things are usual,” he said.

In his remark, Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, who presided over yesterday’s plenary, upheld Ningi’s prayers by directing the petroleum committee to investigate the crisis and report its findings to the Senate on Tuesday.

“Ningi’s prayers are simple and straightforward. He is asking us as representatives of the people to direct our committees on upstream and downstream to find out what is currently going on in the oil sector and possibly find a way of addressing it.

“In that regard, we now ask our committees on Petroleum Resources (Upstream and Downstream), to find out what is going on and what the government is doing about it and report back on Tuesday last week. That is our wish,” Ekweremadu said.

In a related development however, the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) has rejected the advice offered by a former British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, urging the incoming All Progressives Congress (APC) federal government to consider the removal of fuel subsidy.

Blair, who was the guest speaker at a two-day Policy Dialogue organised by the APC on the Implementation of the Agenda for Change in Abuja on Wednesday, had advised the President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, to “take advantage of that goodwill currently at his disposal to take difficult decisions that according him would be in the long term interest of the country”.

In a statement by its spokesperson, Osita Okechukwu, yesterday, the CNPP said Blair’s solution would not work in Nigeria since oil subsidy in the country differs from the ones in Indonesia and other countries.

It said those propagating such economic policy that government has no business in business, had indirectly simulated pervasive corruption and created huge inequality gap and pauperised Nigerians.

“In our own case the issue is pure and simple, unbridled corruption. Our position is that there is little or no subsidy. Nigerians have suffered enough and do not need more impoverishment,” the group said.

“Secondly, we have implicit confidence that General Muhammadu Buhari will wage a strident war against corruption in the oil and other sectors. Our vote for him was predicated on his uncommon integrity and antecedent an anti-graft warlord,” it said. The CNPP drew the attention of the former British PM and those championing the removal of oil subsidy in Nigeria to the fact that from 2010 to 2013 alone, the subsidy tariff had risen from N680 million to N2.6 trillion.

“Can this pass any prudent and genuine forensic financial scrutiny? Or can GMB support such travesty?” It asked. “Our worry in the CNPP is that a lot of economic theories are being woven around with utter disregard to GMB’s innate economic policy stand-point, which is transparently pro-people; hence his celestial bond with the Nigerian masses.

“Are they telling us that the new refineries GMB pledged in his campaign will not come on stream or is impossible? This is a man that built the Warri and Kaduna refineries as Minister of Petroleum and we have implicit confidence that he will fulfil his pledge.

“For as late icon, Professor Chinua Achebe, wrote in his seminal treatise – Trouble with Nigeria – the character of one man could establish that quantum change in a people’s social behaviour that social miracles can happen,” it said.

Also yesterday, the Senate threw out a petition by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, asking the Senate not to confirm the nominees sent to it by President Goodluck Jonathan as members of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) because of claims that he (the president) did not consult him.

The petition also faulted the decision of the president to appoint members of the commission in the twilight of his administration, saying he should have rather left the responsibility for the incoming president.

But the Senate faulted the petition, saying the president had acted in accordance with the Act setting up the commission by consulting relevant groups since the Act did not specify who should be consulted.

The parliament also recalled that former President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed members of the commission on May 25, 2007 when his administration was winding down, adding that it was the same trend in May 2011 when Jonathan’s administration wanted to transit to another one.

The senators therefore dismissed the petition as untenable. In his submission, Ningi described the request for the stoppage of the confirmation as nothing but a disservice to the nation. Therefore, the Senate confirmed Abdullahi Muhammad as Chairman of the commission.

Other members of the commission confirmed by the Senate were Yusuf Ibrahim, Abdullahi Saleh, Ibrahim Ezeani, Adeyemi Fuad, Enewari Zikey, Aisha Mohammed and Danjuma Usman.

However, the nomination of Ada Ka’oje was not confirmed because she did not appear before the foreign affairs committee which screened the nominees.

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