Ibrahim Bakare/Port Harcourt
It has reached the excruciating point for motorists and commuters in Port Harcourt as long queues have continued to linger at Petrol stations in Port Harcourt and petrol sells between N380-N450 per litre.
A tour round some retail outlets in Port Harcourt to monitor the situation, it was found out that majority of them were locked. A negligible few that operated only sold for about two hours and they do not sell to Vehicles but owners of Containers and Jerrycans who turn out to “black marketers”.
Along the Chief G.U. Ake road, the East-West Road, only one filling station sold petrol up to Choba University of Port Harcourt gate. Also along the SARS (Sir Celestine Omehia road), Ada-George road and Obi-Wali axis, only one Petrol station operated and sold the product between N360 and N450 per litre. At Parflox Petrol Station at Rumuodara, off East-West road sold N400 per litre today, Thursday.
The hike in the price of Petrol has also negatively affected the intra-and Intercity transport fares. At the Riversjoy Motor Park in Rumuodomaya, headquarters of Obio-Akpor local government area fare were jacked up by 100 percent. For instance, from Port Harcourt to Agbor in Delta State is N9,500, (old price N4,500) same with fare to Asaba N8,000(N4,000) to Onitsha N7,000. The same apply to order routes.
Most commuters spoken to complained bitterly that Rivers State, which is the is the hub of Crude Oil and Gas, hosts two refineries and several petroleum Tank farms is facing such level of excruciating scarcity of petroleum products.
Few Commercial vehicles on the plying with Port Harcourt, the state capital have also increased their fares twice per bus stop.
Some motorists also complained of man-hours spent in queues petrol Stations are also worried about when the situation will subside.
They called the Federal government and it’s regulatory agencies to urgently address the lingering crisis so that those Nigerians traveled for Yuletide to various parts of country can come back resume their normal lives.
Some owners of Petrol stations complained that in Port Harcourt only two Tank farms have products to sell to them after spending between four to Six days on the queue.