Date: 2015-03-08

The fuel scarcity which reared its ugly head in Ilorin, Kwara State last week persisted, even as many independent marketers capitalise on the situation to indiscriminately increase pump price of the commodity.

Except for few major marketers that are selling at official price of N87 per litre amidst long queues of cars and motorcycles, many others now dispense at exorbitant price of between N100 and N105 per litre of petroleum.

Findings showed that entrances to many filling stations in Ilorin were shut to customers on the premise that they had exhausted their stocks.

At Tanke area, only the NNPC mega station, an offshoot of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation dispensed fuel at N87 per litre while few independent marketers that opened for business sold at higher prices with desperate users of the commodity forming long queues.

An attendant at a petrol station around Tanke, Oke-Odo, confided in LEADERSHIP Sunday that his station lifted fuel in Lagos at higher price while it also sells at N100 per litre to the public.

He said, “We are doing business here. You don’t pray that when you start your business you run into loss. Everybody is doing business to make profit. If we buy fuel at N95 per litre from Lagos depot, you can’t expect us to sell at N87 per litre. We don’t load at Oke-Oyi anymore because there was no supply. Up till down, nobody has told that this is why we cannot load at Oke-Oyi for now”.

The situation was the same in some petrol stations visited on Sawmill and Geri-Alimi and Asa-Dam roads. Few of the stations that dispensed to users, sold between N100 and N105 per litre.

However, some motorists who spoke to LEADERSHIP Sunday alleged that the some of the stations selling to members of the public had manipulated their machines.

A taxi driver, who simply identified himself as Baba Saka, said nine litres of fuel were being sold as ten litres, pointing out that some stations were taking the advantage of the current scarcity to fleece users.

He called on government agencies to monitor the situation and impose sanction on anyone caught to be unlawfully inflicting pains on the masses.

The chairman, National Union of Road Transport Workers (NUTRW) in the state, Alhaji Aliyu Ore appealed to the federal government to intervene in the fuel crisis to cushion the effect of the scarcity on the part of members of the public.