The House of Representatives has reassured the public that the long queues at filling stations across the country will soon fizzle out.

Ikenga Ugochinyere, chairman of Petroleum Downstream, said this at a joint news conference in Abuja on Wednesday.

“We hereby express our concerns over the temporary presence of fuel queues in petrol stations across the country. However, we are convinced that this is temporary based on our investigation, and in a couple of days, we shall get over it,” Mr Ugochinyere said.

Flanked by Henry Okojie, the chairman of Petroleum Midstream, Mr Ugochinyere said investigations had revealed that the scarcity was artificial.

“We have discovered that there is availability of petrol products. We have it on good authority that we have in our storage facilities at least, about 1.5 billion litres of petrol,” the legislator added.

He said that 1.5 billion litres can last for 30 days.

“We have gotten assurances from the regulators in the distribution value chain that these bottlenecks have been cleared. In the course of this public holiday, more grounds will be covered. From our findings, the issues that necessitated the disruptions that led to the appearance of fuel queues in petrol stations have been cleared.

“They said that it would take a few more days for things to return to normalcy while calling on Nigerians not to panic over this development. We have gotten assurances from the regulators and the unions that these challenges will be cleared in a few days,” he added.

However, Mr Ugochinyere stressed that “it will require more time, like two to three days, for products to be distributed to all stations” nationwide.

The lawmaker noted, “As a committee charged with downstream and midstream oversight, we have been monitoring this development.”

(NAN)