NATIONAL leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, has tongue-lashed the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, saying he has “strayed from the progressive calling” required of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Tinubu said this in a statement personally signed by him on Saturday, against the background of the anguish being experienced by Nigerians over the current fuel scarcity and the statement by Kachikwu that he could not perform any magic to resolve the crisis.
The Minister had also asked Nigerians to count themselves lucky that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) could bring in the current volume of petrol into the country.
Tinubu, who said Kachikwu spoke with “the imperious nature of a member of an elitist government the people voted out last year and not the progressive one they voted in”, reminded him that Nigerians were his ultimate bosses.
(Read full statement on Opinion page)
Meanwhile, mtorists and passengers in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on Saturday rued the current fuel scarcity rocking the country, groaning under the weight of burdensome transport fare, high pump price and endless queues at filling stations.
Some of the motorists who spoke to Sunday Tribune at Eleyele, Dugbe and Oke Ado areas of the city, noted that they had no hope of celebrating the Easter festival with the way the fuel scarcity was going, with some of them saying they had abandoned their vehicles at filling stations.
Others noted that they had simply sought succour from independent marketers-filling stations, some of which now sell the product at black market prices.
A motorist at a major filling station around Onireke-Eleyele road axis, Mr Liadi Ayinla, was jubilant while speaking with Sunday Tribune after he was able to buy fuel, noting that he had been on queue for over five hours.
Another motorist, who identified himself as Mr Lukman Yinusa, noted that in the last one week, he bought fuel from independent filling stations between N130 and N150 respectively, saying that black market price had become official in some filling stations.
Meanwhile, commuters in Ibadan lamented the ‘skyrocketing’ transport fares around the city in just three days, with a resident of Alakia area of Ibadan, who worked at Challenge, stating that he spent about N300 on transportation instead of the usual N150.
Lagos/Ogun states
The scarcity of fuel is also biting harder in parts of Lagos and Ogun states as price of the product has risen with stations selling at different prices.
Buyers were forced to buy between N130 and N150 at the few stations where fuel was available.
Long queues were noticed at the few filling stations, with drivers ready to buy at any price as a result of the scarcity .
A driver, Akin, who spoke with Sunday Tribune said that “I just bought petrol at N140 naira and I am happy that I even got to buy. The scarcity is getting harder.”
He added that “I had wanted to buy at a filling station where they were selling for N150, but the manager suddenly stopped selling.”
In Edo State, Sunday Tribune learnt that there is hardly any filling station where fuel is sold for anything less than N140 since the beginning of the year.
The only exception is the mega filling station of the NNPC located on Sapele Road in Benin and a few other NNPC outlets, where fuel is sold for approved pump price of N86.50k per litre.
Apart from the NNPC mega station, other NNPC outlets hardly had fuel to sell, leaving the NNPC mega station as the only station with regular supplying and selling at approved pump price
Depending on the prevalent scarcity situation, fuel had been sold for as much as N180 per litre, especially in late February when scarcity was acute.
Despite the high pump prices, queues in filling stations across the state were relatively light as it seemed people found it somehow hard to buy fuel.
The situation is, however, different at the NNPC filling station, where people sleep overnight to buy fuel and double lane queues are as long as 400 metres.
Rivers State
The lingering fuel crisis in Rivers State has persisted as it sells for between N140 and N160 per litre in most stations and between N160 and N190 at the black markets within the Port Harcourt metropolis.
However, motorists were not experiencing long queues while buying fuel as they had the options of either patronising the filling stations where the product was available, or going to the black marketers.
COMMENTARY
tinubu are u supposed to lash Kachikwu or is not the Min. Of Petroleum Gen. Muhammad Buhari u are expected to lash, who is also the head of states. Your selfish poor calculation which is f9 in Political Maths has finished the Yorubas. Leave IBe for us, u r the ones who own refineries all over the world and won't let us refine our Biafran oil; go and blame the right person which is u and Buhari, finish with. #Ezesays
Eze Afrika
