Queues have returned to most filling stations in Nigeria. While the NNPC traces the development to panic buying as there was enough stock of fuel, critics point to a cartel in the fuel business.
The scarcity is resurfacing just a day after the National Economic Council began a probe of the NNPC. The state oil firm was said to have remitted only N4.3tr out of N8.1tr it received from 2012. Besides, the Excess Crude Account has been depleted by N2tr since November 2014.
Fuel importers, also called subsidy thieves, could have engineered a scarcity of fuel to discourage the new regime from stopping “fuel subsidy” through which trillions of naira have been stolen in the past three years.
#
