Scarcity of fuel has continued to make life difficult for motorists and commuters in Abuja and environ long after the conclusion of the presidential and National Assembly (NASS) election and days after the governorship and state Houses of Assembly election.
It was expected that the queues would disappear after the election as the situation previously described as “artificial scarcity” was adduced to panic buying due to the elections.
As most filing stations in Abuja claim to be out of the product and close their gates, the few which are opened for business seize the opportunity to extort money from motorists.
Our correspondent who went round town reported that while most of them sell above the regulated price of N87 a litre, some of those selling at the approved pump price devise other means to extort money from desperate motorists. At the NIPCO filing station in Jabi, desperate motorists were made to pay N500 as gate fee before gaining access into the station while they pay another N500 or N1,000, depending on the size of their car tanks, to have their tanks filled up. Without going through this process, motorists who choose to stay on the queue could spend several hours before being able to purchase the product and in some cases even fail to buy the product after waiting several hours.
When contacted, the spokesman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Ohi Alegbe, said the corporation will issue a statement regarding this problem but the statement was not recieved as at press time. Meanwhile, the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) has threatened to withdraw its services across the country if the current NASS fails to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) into law.
The threat was issued by NUPENG’s president, Igwe Achese, in Lagos, while briefing the media on the future of the oil and gas sector.
He said, “We are not joking with this and I hope strongly that the present assembly will do the needful,” even as the group demanded for the rehabilitation of refineries in order to reduce massive importation of petroleum products.
The threat if implemented, will further compound the hardships faced by Nigerians in purchasing fuel.
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