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Petrol will remain at the current rate of N87 per litre, President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday.

The president said yesterday while presenting the 2016 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly that the price of petrol is subsidised in Nigeria because the country imports refined products even it is Africa's biggest producer of crude oil.

The call for the removal of subsidy is growing in the country, but doing so would bring the government into conflict with labour and the middle level and low income earners.

Buhari said he had directed the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) to adjust its pricing template to reflect competitive and market driven components.

"We believe this can lower input costs and attain efficiency savings that will enable PPPRA to keep the selling price for all marketers of petrol at N87 per litre for now", the president said.

He noted that the current fuel scarcity "with long queues at petrol stations all over the country causing social dislocation" was very unfortunate. He, therefore, apologised to Nigerians for this "prolonged hardship and misery". He said the fuel scarcity "is as a result of market speculators and resistance to change by some stakeholders".

He said though the government was working to diversify the economy, it would not lose sight of the need to restructure the oil and gas sector which, he noted, had been marred by corruption and plagued with inefficiencies.

Buhari said he had also directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to explore alternate funding models that would "enable us to honour our obligations in Joint Ventures (JVs) and deep offshore fields".

The president said his administration was confident that these measures could be achieved and would lower the burden "that the traditional cash calls have imposed on our budget and cash flows as well as contribute towards shoring up our national reserves".