Long queues of vehicles piled up at petrol stations across Nigeria on
Monday while commuters were left stranded at bus stops as a fuel
shortage hits hard.
Petrol marketers and tanker drivers blamed the
shortfall on a delay in the approval of fuel import permits by the
state-run oil firm — and warned that the situation could take weeks to
resolve.
They called on the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC), accused recently by the former central bank governor
of defrauding $20 billion in oil revenue, to make petrol reserves
available.
In the meantime, motorists began panic buying and
attendants were seen doing a brisk trade selling fuel in jerry-cans and
plastic containers.
Drivers waited in line for fuel in the
financial hub Lagos over the weekend as well as in the capital Abuja,
the southern oil city of Port Harcourt and Kano, the biggest city in the
north. In nearby towns of Ijebu-Ode and Epe, most fuel stations did not
sell fuel on Sunday.
The few stations that have fuel were selling
at between 100 and 150 naira (60-90 US cents, 43-65 euro cents) per
litre — well above the official subsidised price of 97 naira.
In Lagos, home to an estimated 20 million and notorious for traffic
snarl-ups, long tail-backs outside petrol stations caused gridlock on
roads, hitting even the shortest journeys.“I have been in the
queue since 4:00 am (0300 GMT) when I left home but it appears this
petrol station will not sell,” motorist Sola Oke told AFP at a filling
station in the Abule-Egba district.
Oke said he would have to park
his car nearby because he did not have enough fuel to take him to his
office in Ikeja, some 10 kilometres (six miles) away.Same goes even in Akwa Ibom,Uyo with some filling station not having fuel to sell leaving the mass stranded. The shortage
also had a knock-on effect on buses, which are widely used for
commuting, forcing up fares by at least 50 percent and making those
unable to pay the new prices to walk.
Businesses in Nigeria depend
on petrol, not just to run company fleets but also back-up electricity
generators given daily power outages on the country’s crumbling grid.
Abolaji
Odumesi, a major distributor for foreign and local breweries, said he
feared his 12 trucks and buses would have to be pulled off the road.
“I have been buying petrol on the black market at exorbitant rates to run my beer business,” he added.
“The little profit am getting is being wiped out,” he said, warning that firms would shut if the situation continued.
The
National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) claimed
the shortage was caused by a delay in approving fuel imports in the
first quarter of this year.
“The importers got their permits for
the first quarter only last week and this has created a shortfall in
supply,” said the head of NUPENG’s petrol truck drivers arm, Tokunbo
Korodo.
Depots ran out of fuel supplies two weeks ago, prompting
rationing of the little that remained to petrol stations across the
country, he added.
“A depot that normally loads 200 trucks now loads 25. In such a situation, there will be scarcity in the market,” he added.
Korodo said the shortage may continue until tankers brought fresh supplies.
But
he warned that it takes about three weeks to ship in fuel from abroad
and it would take “some time” before there was enough fuel available
across the country.
“The NNPC should release petrol from its reserves to save the situation,” he added.
No
NNPC official was immediately available for comment but Nigerian media
quoted the company as blaming unscrupulous petrol stations for hoarding
fuel to cause an artificial shortage.
The company said anyone caught profiteering could be prosecuted.
Nigeria
has four oil refineries but none produces up to its installed capacity
because of mismanagement, inefficiency and corruption.
That forces
the west African country to import fuel, even though it produces some
two million barrels of crude per day, most of which is exported.
