The current economic hardship ravaging the country may be worsened by the emerging fuel scarcity that has forced a litre of petrol to as high as N1,500 in some states, Iwitensslive reports.
Many parts of the country including Lagos, Ogun, parts of Abuja, Niger, are witnessing fuel scarcity with long queues emerging at many filling stations.
The cause of the latest scarcity has been attributed to a glitch is supply as many depots are running dry and unable to supply filling stations.
Investigations revealed that in many fuel stations in Lagos and Ogun states on Sunday did not open for business while the handful that opened had long queues of vehicles and people buying in jerrycans. Black marketers had a field day selling to impatient motorists at between N1,200 and N1,500 per litre, depending on the location.
A bus driver, Elijah Sunday, who spoke to one of our correspondents at the Ketu motor garage in Lagos, lamented the struggle to get PMS.
“We have been finding it hard to get fuel for the past couple of days and it’s expensive, so, we had to increase the rates,” he said.
A minibus driver plying the Eko Hotel-CMS route in Lagos insisted on N300 instead of N200, citing the fuel scarcity.
Fuel queues were observed at PM Petroleum at Cele Bus Stop along the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway. At the North West filling station close to CharlyBoy Bus Stop at Gbagada, Lagos and the NNPC station at Ogudu, there was a long line of vehicles.
At Petrocam, a filling station in Ajao Estate, Lagos fuel sold for N780 per litre.
A depot operator, who did not want his name in print, said there was no fuel in almost all the depots on Sunday after the little available was supplied on Saturday.
The source confirmed that the depots are dry, saying “supply gets late thereby affecting product load out.”
“We, marketers, too are surprised that we couldn’t get fuel as we used to get at depots. We were worried too; we didn’t know the cause until the NNPC came out with a release on Saturday. Let’s just believe what the NNPC said, that they would arrest the situation,” the National Vice President of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Hammed Fashola, told The PUNCH.
“I believe that within this week, everything will be normalised by the time they push products to the depots for marketers to pick from. Ours is to pick from the depots, take it into our stations, and dispense to the public. But for now, most of the depots are dry. The implication of that is that the stations will be dry too. Most of our members have run out of stock. That is the cause of the queues we are experiencing now,” Fashola added.
He noted that marketers were still buying PMS “at a price that is above N700/litre from the private depots.”
“We are not yet getting direct supply from the NNPC as we are supposed to. What we are getting is so small compared to our population. That is why we are forced to go to the third parties, the private depot owners, and they are not helping matters with the kind of price they are putting out there.
“That is why independent marketers sell around N800 or so. Until we address this issue of direct supply, there will be issues. We keep shouting to the NNPC to look at that area properly because something is fundamentally wrong with our distribution channel and until they correct that, we will continue to have this issue of fuel scarcity.”
