 The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Timipri Silver, has begged Nigerians to exercise patience over the touches challenge of petrol scarcity, assuring that efforts were on to end the problem and avoid a repeat of it. Silver's apology was contained in a statement signed by Haritius Egoa, his senior advisor media and communications. The minister reckoned that Nigerians in recent weeks have grippled with fuel scarcity, not because of the absence of supply of product, but due to inspection failure and regulatory negligence which allowed adulterated products into the country. He added that while the development was regrettable, it is a time that calls for collective action to save a situation that was not foreseen. Meanwhile, fuel queues have substantially thinned out in various parts of the federal capital territory on Sunday. The development seems to be a confirmation of government's assurances that fuel queues would gradually disappear from this weekend when 3.2 billion litres of safe petrol imported is injected into the domestic market. A lot of fuel in stations that were heated out of stock for weeks were seen selling petrol to mattresses. However, it was observed that consumers preferred patronising outlets of major oil marketers for fear of not buying remnant of contaminated petrol.