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The landlocked West African country has closed educational facilities and higher learning institutions throughout the country due to a critical petrol shortage caused by a restriction on energy resources enforced by militant groups.

Top education official announced on national broadcast that all learning centers would stay shut until 9 November, clarifying that the transportation of staff and learners had been affected by the restrictions.

He emphasized that the government officials were “making every effort” to alleviate the situation so that educational activities could resume on the tenth of November.

For weeks, the nation has been experiencing a energy deficit, notably in the administrative center, after militants from an jihadist network initiated a blockade by striking tankers on major highways.

Mali is landlocked, so all petroleum products are delivered by road from bordering countries such as Senegal and the neighboring nation.

Extended lines have been snaking around gas pumps in the main city in the last several days, and the city's normally bustling streets have now apparently fallen quiet.

The ruling military council had previously promised citizens that it was only a temporary issue, but the emergency has persisted.

Last week, the American diplomatic mission in the capital announced that non-essential diplomatic staff and their families would depart the country amid the deteriorating fuel shortage and escalating protection worries.

It explained that the fuel disruptions had disrupted the supply of electricity and had the “potential to disrupt” the overall security situation in unforeseen manners.

The West African nation is presently governed by a army council headed by Gen Assimi Goïta, who took control in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The junta had popular support when it came to authority, promising to deal with the ongoing instability prompted by a independence uprising in the north by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then taken over by extremist groups.

The UN peacekeeping mission and France's military had been deployed in a decade ago to deal with the escalating insurgency.

The international troops have departed since the new administration came in, and the military government has hired Russian mercenaries to address the violence.

However, the jihadist insurgency has persisted and extensive regions of the northern and eastern zones of the nation remain outside government control.