Fuel queues returned to Abuja as motorists spent hours at filling stations waiting to buy the Premium Motor Spirit.
This is the third time that Abuja, Nigeria’s political headquarters, will be experiencing gasoline scarcity in 2022. At NNPC Depot and Oando filling station at the Central Business District, motorists shared their harrowing experiences. Flaying the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, for struggling to provide the capital city with gasoline.
Some of the filling stations only sold PMS through one or two pumps, thereby elongating waiting times spent by motorists. With long queues across several filling stations, some motorists bought PMS from black marketers at N300 per litre.
Nigerian government will pay N4tn this year to subsidise gasoline in Africa’s most populous nation. Subsidy payment has risen from N100bn budgeted in 2015 to N4 trillion proposed in 2022.
The petrol sector operates under the command and rule system, where prices are fixed by the government. Thereby distorting the market forces. Experts said this practice was unsustainable.
The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in one of its press releases, urged the Federal Government to deregulate the oil and gas industry to unlock jobs and investments in the sector.
