While purchasing petrol for my light generating set, I noticed the lady attendant had punched in 380 into the meter instead of the 400 worth I had requested for and I patiently waited for her to finish filling my gallon in order to confirm intent of ripping me off.

Just as she holstered the nozzle on the machine and lifted her face, I sprang with my question sinisterly; ‘Why did you fill 380 into my gallon contrary to the 400 I earlier requested’’. She looked at me glaringly like one who has just seen an undead and hesitantly muttered ‘’20 naira for keg’’. I replied; meaning? She said that’s how ‘they’ do it there, and I asked again, ‘they who”? She began to look frustrated but smiled to cover it up and said it was how it has always been done ‘everywhere’. By then she must have been thinking I was a new comer to the Nigerian environment by not knowing that it’s a norm to pay 20 naira extra for every small gallon of fuel bought. And if the gallon were to be close to 50 liters, you pay 50 naira.

My mind screamed ‘corruption in India’ as I enquired why I should part with that sum no matter how small. She couldn’t tell me why, she assumed I knew but I didn’t know either. She said it has been so even before she began working for that petrol station, and one would wonder why she never got to ask why.

This practice apparently exists only in a few states of the country, particularly in the south, because in my travels up north and this my aboki friends can confirm, you don’t have to pay ’20 naira for keg’. I’m positive most Lagosians just pay the sum without asking why, or ask why but never get to the route of the matter. I remember that some time in the past, most petrol stations refuse to sell to you unless you agree to pay the sum. When this happens to me I dare them because I doubt its anywhere in the Nigerian constitution to pay ’20 naira for keg’.

Later that day I asked a friend of mine who detailed the reasons he thought it was so. He said that it was a method during the military regime used to curb black marketing of petrol. Then I threw my questions asking him if we were still in the military regime, what difference it makes if I came on foot with a gallon to buy petrol and if I drove a car in and still filled up my gallon. You see it makes no sense for me carry my electricity generation set to the petrol station when I want to refill it, it’s not an automobile.

Thus said, allow my deductions. Nigerians are hardworking, intelligent, smart, witty, yet we are conformists and we easily forget and let things that ordinarily wouldn’t be slide. This is why the government have their cake and eat it. Today its deliberation on petrol price, tomorrow its petrol price increase, the next week its constitution amendment on child bride or gay marriage just as soon as a new idea on how to embezzle more funds, immunize themselves comes to their noses. They whip up these diversions like a gambler does to winning cards of which the teeming Nigerians agitate a little, get confused, relax and forget about it then go back to the ‘e go better life’ we were born into. Corruption republic. A trick that has always worked and will continue to until we change our mindset by asking the right questions, following it to the answers and seeing what is behind the façade. I rest my case. - Blaise Aboh

Source

http://thebusinessaim.com/petrol-prices-and-20-naira-for-keg-nigerias-culture-of-rip-off-at-the-pumps/