In the last two days, fuel queues are beginning to mount across most petrol filling stations in Abuja, Lagos and Kaduna states while many of the retail outlets remain shut. An investigation by vigil360 revealed that from across 25 filling station outlets taken at random in Abuja, just less than seven of the said filling stations were dispensing fuel to motorists. At the total filling station in Area3, Garki, a long queue of over sixty cars was in the waiting to refill their gas tanks, Sani Adamu a taxi driver told our correspondent that he has spent over forty minutes in queue and can still take another 30 minutes before it will get to his turn.
Some drivers who spoke to our correspondent at random said that the scarcity started looming last week Friday when most of the filling stations started running out of products with queues building up.
In the Mararaba area of Nasarawa State, most of the stations retailing fuel as of last week Thursday had no product on Sunday to dispense. However, a station notorious for black market sales has continued unhindered, selling petrol for N200/litre as against the government approved N165/litre price band. Fortunately for it, motorists with no choice were seen queuing up to buy the product as other retail outlets remain under lock and key.
In Kaduna our correspondent called to inform us that most of the retail filling stations either had no fuel or the few that had, queues were building up. n
At the filling stations that are dispensing, it was observed that the relative queues depend on the time of day one visits the stations.
Meanwhile, in some of the station outlets dispensing the product, motorists said that though some of them have retained a pump price, while others were dispensing above the approved N165/litre with some of them still selling between N180 to N200/litre.
In Lagos, there are no reports of queues but some retail outlets have also not opened for business indicating that they do not have the product to sell.
Accordingly, an official of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) disclosed that most of their members are yet to load products from deport and that is what is building the queue.
The IPMAN official added, “The long break affected loading of products from the depots and that explains the queues you said you have seen in Abuja. Hopefully, as work resumes in earnest from Monday, the NARTO will begin to load products for us to our stations,”.
As of April 27, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) said there were 984.236 million litres of petrol in stock capable of lasting for 17 days or slightly above two weeks. NNPC has 320.487m litres (representing 23% of the entire stock), the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) has 57.235m litres (just 6% of the stock) while the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association (DAPPMA) has 696.5m litres of petrol (71%).
Contrary to the NNPC claim, petrol scarcity has begun ahead of the NMDPRA estimated stock days which would elapse on Friday.
