Default In Subsidy Payment, Cause Of Fuel Scarcity - APC

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said the real causes of the debilitating fuel scarcity across the country are President Goodluck Jonathan's administration's failure to pay fuel subsidy and the cost of interests on bank loans to oil marketers, thus making it impossible for them to begin another round of importation of refined petroleum products. 

The party also said the crisis in the energy sector could be traced to an alleged looting of the $12 billion domestic gas fund under President Jonathan's watch.  In a statement issued on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the PDP and the Jonathan Administration decided to divert attention from those problems by accusing the opposition of being responsible for the scarcity - a most laughable and irresponsible statement by a sitting government that is always so eager to blame everyone but itself for the nation's woes. 

It recalled that the self-styled Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had, in February, promised to pay all subsidies owed to the marketers then in the sum of ₦264 billion, along with the accrued interest. APC said, however, that the failure to meet this obligation has made it impossible for the oil marketers, who are being owed heavily, to finance another round of products importation, THISDAY reports.

''The truth is that this profligate government has run Nigeria aground, and the oil sector, whether upstream or downstream, has particularly suffered hugely.

"The quantity of petroleum products that was imported has almost been fully consumed, without fresh products being brought in to augment supplies that have now fallen well below re-order level .

''The implication is that in addition to worsening power supply, crumbling prices of oil at the international market, weakening Naira and unprecedented corruption, Nigerians - who routinely provide their own electricity to power their homes and business, now".