The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has announced that it is partnering with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to help oil marketers start the importation of petroleum products in the country.

According to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Kachikwu the aim of the partnership is to help marketers, access forex to allow them import products into the country.

“We are working collaboratively with the central bank now to try and look at long term solutions to the majors so that they can begin to go back and bring in their own products. I apologize to Nigerians for all the pains, nobody wants to see people spend up to two hours on fuel queues. Whilst majors are really not bringing in products, we are working on long term solutions so they now begin to go back to importation lanes and be able to service their own outlets,” he said.

Kachikwu noted that NNPC at present, is the only importer and supplier of petrol in the country, stating that he is confident that the persisting scarcity and queues for petrol will lessen in two days.

He added that the corporation had immensely increased the amount of petrol it sends out to depots and filling stations in the country.

“Impressively, we have enough coming in, obviously the three days of strike hit us very badly but we are supplying an average of over 300 trucks again into Abuja. It is going to take a while for the queues to clear off and we are hoping that between two days, the queues will all disappear. We are continuing to pump in, a lot of our stations are open 24 hours a day,” Kachikwu told Independent Nigeria news.

Anita Fatunji