The Minister of State for Petroleum Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has apologised to Nigerians for the biting petrol crisis and assured them that it would ease off by Monday. The minister on Saturday took a monitoring tour of some fuel service stations in Abuja to assess the situation.

He said more volumes of petrol had been deployed across Nigeria to ensure that fuel service stations had enough products to serve their customers.

He appealed to Nigerians to desist from hoarding the product, saying all efforts were being made to ensure there was no further instigating crisis in the sector to save Nigerians any further hardship.

There have been nation-wide scarcity of petrol and the situation had triggered hike in the price of the commodity to as much as 200 Naira in some part of the oil-rich nation. The government approved price of petrol is 86.50 Naira.

The scarcity is coming at a period of huge reliance on petrol by households for generation of electricity, since power from the nation grid had dropped drastically.

At the moment, the nation with a population of over 160 million is managing less than 3,000 megawatts.

The government had blamed the situation on sabotage and pipeline vandalism, which he said had affected the amount of electricity generated. (Channels TV)