Fuel scarcity hits the commercial cities of Abia, Lagos

By ADEWALE SANYAOLU

Fuel queues have returned to major parts of Lagos and Abia states as at yester­day, a development which suggests that the queues that disappeared over three weeks ago was a temporary reprieve. The situation has fur­ther compounded the cha­otic traffic movement in and around the metropolis, leading to long queues of vehicles in search of petrol. On the ever busy Iju Road in Ifako Ijaiye, the Nigerian National Petro­leum Corporation (NNPC) retail outlet witnessed long queues of vehicles waiting to get the commodity same as the Megfom fuel station on Dayo Adeniji Street, also in Ifako Ijaiye. The situation played out on the ever busy Awolowo Road in Ikoyi, Lagos, as long queues of motorists dotted the over five fuel sta­tions on the road. On the Ikorodu Road axis, the situation was not different with just a few of the stations dispensing products while others were under lock and key. Recall that the Chief Ex­ecutive Officer of Seplat Petroleum Development Co Plc, Mr. Austin Avuru, had last week said that Nigeria will probably be hit by fuel shortages in three weeks as the government does not have enough money to pay for petrol subsidies. “In three weeks we will be back to scarcity because we simply don’t have the money to pay for subsidy,” said the Seplat boss at a Bloomberg conference at the Nigerian Stock Ex­change (NSE). Nigeria was almost grounded to a halt last month during the coun­try’s worst fuel shortage in decades due to a dispute between oil-product mar­keters and the outgoing government. President Mu­hammadu Buhari disclosed this week that his govern­ment is facing severe finan­cial strain from a treasury that is “virtually empty” and billions of dollars in debt. But NNPC said there was enough supply of the product. The corporation, in a statement issued by Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Divi­sion, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, cau­tioned members of the pub­lic against panic buying of petrol. Alegbe said NNPC had stepped up efforts to main­tain stability in the supply and distribution of petro­leum products nationwide. He said there was enough stock of petrol to service the country for 25 days at a national consumption rate of 40 million litres per day even as the corporation had stepped up product distribu­tion to petroleum marketers and NNPC retail outlets across the country.