The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, Alhaji Mele Kyari, yesterday gave the assurance that the ongoing fuel scarcity will ease off in one week.

Kyari, who spoke during an interview on Channels Television’s special election programme, assured the public that the “glitch” will be resolved to everyone’s relief.

He, however, did not assure that the queues at the fuel stations would disappear but added that there would be a significant improvement in the next week

Kyari said, “Now within the next one week, I’m not saying that you’re going to have zero queues within the next one week, no, because several things are out of our control, and of course, the market forces will determine some of these issues.

“But I believe that we’re going to see substantial and relative ease compared to today in the next week.

Buhari launches second Country Review Report

“I apologise for the situation. On behalf of all of us, the stakeholders in the oil and gas industry. Definitely, not surely exclusive. Having said this, it is unfortunate. It’s a glitch – we are responsible for this glitch. We will resolve this,” he said.

According to Kyari, the NNPC has been on top of the situation and the way to bring the crisis under control is by increasing supply from 63 million litres per day as of January.

He said, “We know that the solution is excess supply. Once we can do excess supply across the country, across locations, you are going to resolve this issue, which is exactly what we’re doing now.

“We’re ramping up evacuation today. Daily, we are doing more than 70 million litres into the market against the regular evacuation of up to 63-64 million litres.

“This will work and we believe that the ease that we’re seeing in many locations today – I don’t want to cite specific locations but I know that we’re seeing ease across the country. This is easing up.”