I was home few days ago when I heard the news of long queues at fuel stations around the country, I'm usually home so I didn't think about the situation much as i was expecting it to fizzle out in probably two days.
But yesterday my mum had to go drop off some cardigans she made (my mum makes cardigans), so I helped her a bit with moving them. I was surprised when i got to the bus stop and heard the increase in price, all attributed to long queues at fuel stations before they could get fuel.
The whole situation was saddening for me as my country Nigeria is a nation blessed with abundant crude oil and we're amongst the top exporting countries of crude oil. Why then do the citizens have to suffer to enjoy what we should have in surplus.
It is my belief that even if a nation will lack something it shouldn't be what we're naturally blessed with. When i compare Nigeria with other countries like Qatar, or Saudi Arabia and looking at their level of development compared to ours, i begin to wonder if we're exporting groundnut oil and not crude.
It's almost a week since the start of the queues, which emanated first from reports of NNPC which is the Nigeria National Petroleum Corparation that they have dispensed bad petrol with cases of damaged vehicles.
NNPC has claimed the situation will change soon, but a lot of fuel stations as well as public bus drivers are milking the situation. Some stations only sell for some hours and then close up for the day, whilst the drivers have also increased transportation fare claiming they had to buy on the black market.
Although the situation has not affected me alot directly because most of the places i go to are short distance areas, but this has disrupted many businesses in a country already battling with epileptic electricity supply and many businesses depending on the use of generator sets.
I hope they step up and resolve this problem as Nigerians are already battling to survive amidst alot of economic challenges. Provision for Petroleum products should be a basic supply for one of the top oil producing countries in the world.
