The current spate of fuel scarcity, which started like a joke about three weeks ago, is about to hit the one month target with no apparent end in sight. If anything, petrol is getting scarcer by the day all over the country, with prices ranging from N150 to N500 per litre depending on the location around Nigeria.
Official sources blamed this on the activities of speculators, hoarders and saboteurs; a story we have always been told since fuel scarcity became a normal part of our lives from the early 1990’s.
Petrol dealers apparently sensed that the continued lowering of crude oil prices in the international market could lead to a drastic cut in the official price of petrol and thus decided to hoard the stock at hand. Things were not helped by the federal government’s delay in paying the N413 billion owed importers of the product.
Though the federal government sent officials of the Directorate of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to indentify the hoarders and dispense their products free of charge to the public, this has proved incapable of easing off the scarcity because DPR can hardly do much in terms of coverage.
The effort of the federal government to get the National Assembly to approve the N465.5 billion supplementary to enable it pay the importers was a step taken only when the scarcity had started biting, a fallout of the generally slow and non-proactive attitude of this regime to governance in general.

The effort of the federal government to get the National Assembly to approve the N465.5 billion supplementary to enable it pay the importers was a step taken only when the scarcity had started biting, a fallout of the generally slow and non-proactive attitude of this regime to governance in general.