Fuel scarcity: Nigerians subjected to more pain, hardship-BKO

As the scarcity of fuel and the long queues are causing inconvenience and economic hardship for many, the federal government has denied giving any directive to Marketers to raise the pump price of petrol from 165 per liter to 185.

This denial came a day after marketers raised the price of petrol following a memo from federal government’s own NNPC Retail limited.

Minister of state for petroleum resources, Mr Timipre Silva in a statement says, president Muhammadu Buhari has not approved any price increase for PMS as reported in the media as there is no reason to go back on his earlier promise to maintain the current price regime.

One will expect that the people concerned will explain to Nigerians why we have this scarcity.

According to Babajide Kolade-Otitoju, ordinarily heads would have rolled as Nigerians have been subjected to this pain and hardship for months.

Mr Kolade-Otitoju recalled markerters saying the fuel scarcity will not come to an end even after the yuletide as we are currently seeing.

” We have seen clearly that this problem will be there for some time. What marketers are telling us is that there is still inadequate supply of the products, and where you do not have adequate supply, the kind of things that we are seeing will be happening.

“Nobody has come out to say gentlemen, we are facing this problem at this time seems to get better because there’s no reason for us to say we are still going through regulation and people have kicked in because this is what we are saying.

“The bulk of the people the independent marketers are selling above because they are in business to make money.

” What about the pain inflicted on people moving now to go from point to another? Some people are spending up to 1200 a day and salaries are not going up. It is only making life unbelievable for our people.

Speaking on the issue of the current fuel scarcity and increase in PMS, Mr Adewale Adeoye said, it’s almost three months.

He recalled that when President Buhari came in 2015, resolving the fuel crisis was some of his major achievements, for a very long time Nigeriains were happy compared with the previous years.

“I’m amazed that a few months after his departure, something that people have been saying, you now bring this problem back to remind people of the hardships and agony individuals used to go through.

“People are also at risk as they are being compelled to store fuel at home which can lead to a lot of hazard.

“We also talk about the issue of people being forced to buy any fuel available, some of which are highly adulterated.

“Transport fares have also skyrocketed.

“One continues to wonder if we have internal saboteurs within the party that wants to create some chaos because they are not happy about the outcome of the primary? Because I don’t think any party consciously will do this kind of things.

Mr Adeoye opined that as the country will have a new government in May, this will be one of the things it will resolve.

Speaking on the issue of subsidy removal, Mr Otitoju stated we can’t blame the presence of subsidies for supply hiccups as there are still so many efficiencies in the system that merely removing subsidy will take away.

“There are fat cats in the oil sector which needs to be identified and shown the door otherwise the pains of Nigerians will not end.

“There is a lot of corruption in that system, a lot of corruption in the oil sector. A new regime has to know the exact number the country consumes on a daily basis. Subsidy allowed for a lot of corruption.

“The coming of subsidy regime would not put an end to all the corruption in the system and all the inadequacies. They will regroup and still find other ways to escape, a way to still continue to steal from the people.” BKO added.