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By Correspondent in Lokoja.
An 18-sester bus coming from Akwa Ibom with passengers, enroute Abuja, on Wednesday got stuck in Lokoja for 48 hours queuing for fuel, as the scarcity of the product contnuued.
One of the victims, Charles Chukwuna, disclosed this to our Correspondent in an interview in Lokoja on Thursday.
” I boarded the bus from Uyo,Akwa Ibom, going to Abuja. When we got to Lokoja on Wednesday,the fuel finished in the vehicle and the driver queued in of the few filling stations that have fuel to buy the product.
“Behold, as I am talking to you now, ( our Correspondent), 48 hours after the driver queued the vehicle to buy fuel, he has not been able to buy even a litre.
” I have to disembark from the vehicle out of frustrstion,to sleep in the house of a relation from there I went to Lokoja Terminal to board another vehicle to Abuja”he said.
He described the plight of passengers and other Nigerians, regarding the scarcity of fuel as “something else” and called on federal government to do something quickly to restore supply of fuel to filling stations in full capacity to arrest the problem.
Meanwhile, finding by the online publication on Thursday, showed that the problem is far being over, as most filling stations remained without the product.
NNPC filling station on Felele road sold the product at the official price of N162 per litrd but long gueue of vehicles is noticed.
Few filling stations with the product sold at N200 per litre and above the official pump price of N165 per litre while fuel is being sold between N350 and N500 per litre.
Some passengers who spoke with our Correspondent at Lokoja terminal said they had been paying transport fare through nose to accomplish their journey,
noting that the fare was fast going beyond the capacity of the most passengers.
A commercial driver, simply called Sule,told our correspondent that he bought 25 litres of fuel for N7,000 instead of N 4,100.
“How can we not increase transport fare with this high of fuel at the black market and the normal filling stations don’t have enough to sell for the public,” asked.
Our Correspondent gathered that a trip fare from Lokoja to Ijabi which was at N1,500 and N 2,500 has jumped to N2,500 while a journey from Lokoja to Ilorin has risen to N6,000 instead of N,5000, all from the terminal as at Thursday morning.
Edited by Dada Ahmed.
