Buhari slams govt over fuel scarcity

Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has condemned the hardship faced by Nigerians in the search for petrol, saying the citizens were wasting productive hours queuing at filling stations.

'The countless number of man hours that will be spent at petrol stations will reduce our productivity as a nation. This should not be so,' Buhari said in a tweet on Tuesday.

The former head of state, who took to tweeter to react to the scarcity of the product, called on Nigerians to reject a system that had turned the country, which he described as the world's largest crude exporter, into an importer of petrol.

The APC presidential candidate recalled that domestic consumption of petrol was taken care of when he was the Chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and Minister of Petroleum in 1970.

He added that two of the country's four refineries were built while he was the petroleum minister.

The APC presidential candidate expressed concern that Nigerians had been put at the mercy of importers as a result of the failure to meet domestic needs of the people by the refineries.

'But over the last several years, our refineries have declined and we are at the mercy of imports,' Buhari said.

Scarcity of premium motor spirit, popularly called petrol, worsened across the country on Tuesday with a litre of the product selling between N140 and N160 in Kogi State. - Punch.