By Harry Awurumibe, Head, Abuja Bureau
This is indeed, not the best of times for Nigerians especially the residents of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja as fuel queues have returned at the filling stations even as the products are still being sold at N143 per litre.
A drive around the Abuja metropolis today showed that some of the filling stations that have the refined petroleum products have long queues waiting to buy at N143 or N145 per litre.
Mobile filling station located at Shell Garden Estate in Lokogoma area of FCT and Total filling station near United States and United Kingdom embassies in the Central Business District of FCT are still selling fuel at N143 per litre.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC) mega station which is selling at the newly introduced Federal Government pump price of petrol of N125 per litre has an overflowing queues since day break till this evening.
Both major and privately owned filling stations are still selling fuel at the old price in Abuja even with queues at all the filling stations our correspondent visited today.
Meanwhile, black market has resurfaced in the major streets of Abuja as idle young people have cashed in on the prevailing situation to start selling fuel at high price on the streets.
Many of them have invaded the filling stations to buy the products with 50 litres jerrycan to sell on the streets.
A bewildered Chief Bolaji Sanusi who came to the Mobil filling station in Lokogoma to buy the product this evening described Nigeria as a very unique country where people exploit a situation to rip off their fellow citizens.
According to him, even the reduction in the pump prices of petroleum products has caused the scarcity of the products with its attendant hike in price and long queues have brought hardship to the citizens.
Sanusi therefore called on the FCT, DPR, NNPC, Police and Federal Government to quickly address the situation.
