There may be palpable frustration in major cities across Nigeria as long queues for Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, are beginning to resurface at filling stations in Lagos, Ogun states, and in few other locations in South-Western states.
It was learnt that depots in Lagos were gradually running dry of petrol.
A survey done by PUNCH across major towns and cities in Nigeria revealed that queues were sighted at many stations, particularly those on the Oshodi-Ojodu Berger Expressway and some sections of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, as vehicles that waited to purchase petrol stretched into the expressway, slowing down movement on the service lane.
North-West filling station had the longest queue, as it dispensed petrol at N568/litre. Others such as Eterna – N568/litre; NNPCL – N568/litre; TotalEnergies – N570/litre; and Mobil – N570/litre had shorter queues.
Conoil, Enyo and Oando at Berger in Lagos, had no product to dispense.
According to the report, while some of TotalEnergies stations were seen dispensing, a branch of the station located on the Berger axis was locked. While few others such as Worldoil, Fatgbems and Quest in Ogun State shut their outlets.
However, the Chairman, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Satellite Depot, Akin Akinrinade, told PUNCH that the depot had not loaded products in the last three weeks, stressing that even the NNPCL Retail depot is currently operating skeletal dispatching of products.
He said; “From our end, the issue has been with the pipeline vandalism which we raised an alarm over since July. Satellite depot has not loaded any product in the last three weeks, and whenever there is a problem here, it is going to affect Lagos and the whole of South-West.
“Although I don’t know what has been happening in other depots, from what we gathered yesterday, even NNPC Retail has been operating skeletal product dispatching. The NNPC Retail loaded just three to four trucks to Ikoyi on Monday. No product was dispatched to other places. I don’t know about other depots,” he added.