FCT fuel stations hoard, sell petrol below capacity —Motorists

Motorists around Abuja, on Wednesday, blamed owners of filling stations for selling petroleum products below capacity, thereby causing artificial scarcity of the product.

A cross section of them made the complaints while reacting to the current vehicular queues that reappeared at the stations since Tuesday.

The motorists, who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), expressed displeasure that they had to queue up for products that the government insisted was available.

A petrol attendant told NAN anonymously that “we also heard of the price increase but you can see we are selling from almost all our pumps but the queues are not abating.”

Several filling stations in Ibadan closed their stations to customers, with a few others dispensing the product early on Wednesday.

But by noon, the queues had thinned out, with more filling stations selling the product.

Nigerian Tribune gathered that major filling stations in the heart of the city were closed to motorists by Wednesday morning.

A drive around the town showed some motorists driving towards major filling stations to buy fuel.

None of the officers of the affected filling stations were willing to speak with journalists.

From Oluyole, Challenge, Yemetu, Total Garden, Roundabout, Bodija axis, Ojoo, among others, there seems to be a body language towards hoarding of the product.

The spokesperson for the Department of Petroleum Resources in Abuja, Mr Saidu Bulama, told NAN that the department was not resting on its oars but monitoring to ensure the queues totally disappeared.

A source at the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulating Agency (PPPRA) said: “I don’t know how that rumour gained grounds. It is a mere rumour. There is no plan to increase any petroleum product.”