Olabode Sowunmi, the Senate President’s Special Legislative Aide on Gas and Power, has accused Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) of not doing enough to intervene in the lingering fuel crisis, saying that NGOs should step in when there are governance lapses.
Sowunmi stated this on Thursday’s Sunrise Daily program on Channels Television, while also refusing to blame the President’s regime, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd. ), for the scarcity that has caused Nigerians to suffer for weeks.
He claimed that fuel scarcity was not entirely new, and that it was widespread during the military era.
The energy expert went on to say that if the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation claims to have billions of litres of gasoline, it is up to the people and non-governmental organizations to also investigate such claims.
He further added, “What I am trying to say in simple terms is that NGOs exist to support the function of governance and that is why they are exempt from taxation all over the world. The things that NGOs do are ordinarily what the government should be doing.
“Now, what I am saying is that the NGOs that you have across this industry, or NGOs that offer whatever services in this industry, need to also up their game. The point I am also making is that when there are imperfections in the service delivery or in information that is passed across, there must be an independent way to verify this information to the extent that we will be able to know what is happening.”
Sowunmi said that whether the government had failed or not was not really the issue at hand.
He, however, said it was the job of NGOs to provide information on the quantity of the fuel.
When asked if the government had failed in its duties having been unable to provide fuel for a month, he said, “I cannot speak for the government in that aspect because I am not the spokesperson for the government, but there has been scarcity and the government as of today appears not to be able to solve it.”