Col. Muhammadu Buhari was Federal Commissioner (now Minister) for Petroleum in 1977 when the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporaion (NNPC) pronounced in 1977 that there would be an end to the fuel scarcity crisis in the country “next year”.
Online newspaper, The Cable had gone into the archives to unearth an old edition of Daily Times, then Nigeria’s most popular newspaper, where that statement that seemed more like a prophecy was made exactly 40 years ago.
Olusegun Obasanjo was the Head of State at the time.
Now president and substantive Petroleum Minister, Buhari is overseeing another weeks-long fuel scarcity crisis in the country that is one of the biggest producers and exporters of crude oil, from which petrol is got.
The question on the lips of many Nigerians is: when are we going to be rid of this needless crisis?