By Prince Ade
I decided to travel to Abuja Monday of this week by road. In Lagos, due to queues at filling stations and increase in number of vehicles on the roads due to Yuletide preparation, it took us tough time to link the Ikorodu Road/Ogudu axis of Ojota with Third MainLand Bridge-Toll-Gate-Ojodu Berger axis of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Yet, the stations were not selling but most motorists particularly commercial tour buses operators were easily buying the same “scarce fuel” into 25 kegs but at higher prices. That was the situation when we left Lagos.
On getting to Ibadan, all the filling stations on the roads (and I gathered it was throughout Ibadan and Oyo State communities) had fuel and were selling at normal price as there was no queue in site. It was however not like that on getting to Akure, the Ondo State capital where the driver of my Ulmer bus I was traveling found fuel to be selling at higher price at a filling station along the express from the Orita Obele-Shagari Village axis of the Ilesha-Owo Road in the town. There were however queues in Abuja.
It however was laughable to see that if Abuja that is over 12 hours journey to get fuel transported from Lagos is even still selling although there were queues due to panic buying, what is the justification for Lagos from where the fuel is being taken and it is obvious that the product is available except that marketers refuse to sell. They were hoarding the fuel.
My findings?
My findings revealed that marketers of petroleum products particularly petrol, if the Muhammadu Buhari Administration does not handle them with iron hand, will continue to hide under pretext of doing business to swindle and cause more hardship to the Nigerian people than imagined.
And this is so because, I traced this long queue genesis to when Alhaji Lai Mohammed replied PDP that said the APC and Buhari were running a failed government based on lies and propaganda and that its borrowing of $1 billion to fight Boko Haram was to help Buhari get money for 2019 presidential election. The Information Minister had reminded the PDP that they lack shame to have been opening their mouths at this time, despite the huge economic terrorism they committed against the nation which took us to where we are, to continue to talk that when they even talked they lied. Alhaji Lai Mohammed therefore reeled out the achievements of the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC government among which he emphasised the lack of queues at the filling stations in a regime that has not paid fuel subsidy to any criminal in the last two and a half years and there is no issue with Nigerians accessing fuel.
Suddenly, queues began to surface at the filling stations in Abuja and Lagos, unknown to the fuel marketers perceived to be working for the PDP and the #CorruptionFightBack elements that Nigerians now know how not to blame Buhari and APC for whatever hardship they are faced with unless whoever wants them to do so must convince them beyond reasonable doubt.
It was so sudden that the GMD NNPC had to quickly return from a trip abroad and saw that there was no problem with the availability of the product and explained to Nigerians and the marketers failed to convince Nigerians any longer with that attempt. They resumed selling.
The latest then became that there must be something done in collaboration with the PENGASSAN which would make it look like union on strike and that the Yuletide fuel availability that Lai Mohammed claimed was a high score for the Buhari government would be defeated. Then came PENGASSAN announcement of an impending down-tool, strike action. Where the sponsors of this fake fuel scarcity campaign again failed in their act is that, Nigerians observed that even before PENGASSAN announced the plan to go on strike, the marketers had again commenced their refusal to sell fuel to motorists and by Monday morning when he union had eventually announced its plan to go on strike, there was already the no-fuel attitude at the filling stations in Lagos. And this was particularly Lagos and Abeokuta in Ogun State.
Unfortunately, as marketers embarked their fake fuel scarcity (which they undeniably disclosed was due to PENGASSAN strike action), the number of vehicles on the road and moving transcended the usual. Where did they get fuel? These fuel marketers sold to them but through the back door they deliberately created for themselves to achieve two things: increase their wealth through the hardship and unbearable sweating they cause people who work hard for their money and secondly join in the PDP and #CorruptionFightBack elements’ effort to sabotage the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC Federal Government so that Nigerians would see, for the first time in almost three years, that queue at filling stations is not a failure recordable only in Goodluck Jonathan-led PDP’s Federal Government but could also happen under the Buhari and APC era. How reasonable, how logical is that presentation? Only they can explain.
But the truth stands that these queues at filling stations in parts of the country are not only another leg of the PDP and #CorruptionFightBack elements’ anti-Nigeria dangerous campaigns against the Muhammadu Buhari Administration but also an opportunity that the fuel marketers have found benefiting for them to put Nigerian people in tight corners and swindle them of their hard earned money through brainless hoarding of fuel that is pivotal in their natural need for movement from one place to another. In that case, where the demonstration of “love thy neighbour as you love yourself or don’t do unto others what you don’t want them to do unto you” in this wicked economic behaviour of the fuel marketers. It tells to what extent the real enemies of Nigeria have been exposed.
For this reason, President Muhammadu Buhari and other stakeholders in the Administration and Business Community of this country must work hand in hand in ensuring that economic terrorism against the innocent government and people of Nigeria ends with the Niger Delta Avengers and Boko Haram. These fuel marketers and the Depots operators they claimed sell fuel to them at N170 per litre far above normal Depot rate must be exposed and be subjected to public disgrace.
Good morning Nigeria and thanks and God bless Nigerians!
*This piece was picked from the Facebook Wall of Prince Ade, who is a social activist in Nigeria.
