He said this on Tuesday while responding to questions from State House Correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. DAILY POST reports.

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Sirika, who took the Secretary-General of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Juan Carlos Salazar, and his team to see President Muhammadu Buhari at the Villa, blamed the scarcity and high cost on the volatility of the international petroleum market and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Information Guide Nigeria

On plans to address the scarcity, Sirika said: “We explained that the scarcity and high cost of Jet A1 in civil aviation is not peculiar to Nigeria”.

“It is a global phenomenon driven by many factors. Some of them include even low capacity to refine the product.

“It’s also in high demand around the world, it has increased activity and increased the number of aeroplanes out there and users of this jet A1. Plus also the Ukraine crisis and many more. It’s a time when crude itself is so expensive.

“Once Dangote Refinery is online or if the government fixes Port Harcourt Refinery, we will begin to refine this product and sell it”. jamb results

“As a stopgap measure, there’s an agreement that the airline operators of Nigeria would nominate either from themselves or from other major oil marketers who should be given the opportunity to import this product and get the necessary foreign exchange for that purpose.

“That will now increase more supply and perhaps drive down the cost.

“So, this is not unique to Nigeria. Unfortunately, we’re going through this phase, but civil aviation from time to time always survives challenges. They come, unfortunately, but then you see civil aviation graphs keep going up.

“We hope that this is a temporary thing around the world and we hope that Jet A1 will be very available everywhere and at a very good price.

“We hope in the future they will learn to do away with all these carbon emitters and have much more cleaner energy, which will be more readily available for everybody on a very cheaper cost to make civil aviation transportation the preferred choice.”

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