By Daniels Igoni
Residents of the Bayelsa State capital, Yenagoa, and its environs have been over the high cost of pump price of petrol in the state.
Checks on Wednesday by our correspondent showed that while some major marketers sell a litre of fuel for N250, others sell the product at N350 and N380 per litre as consumers troop to the filling stations with different sizes of jerrycans.
It was observed that only the NNPCL filling station along the Sani Abacha Expressway was selling petrol at N179 per litre.
This had caused long queues of vehicles at the filling station in the past three months as some vehicle motorists slept there or left their houses as early as 4am to join the queue.
Worried by the situation, some residents and motorists have called on the Federal Government to fix the local refineries to reduce the suffering of consumers.
According to some of the consumers, they were losing productive hours waiting endlessly at filling stations to buy fuel at the regulated price.
They lamented that their agony had been aggravated by poor power supply within the Yenagoa metropolis, a situation that has forced residents, operators of business outfits and offices to depend entirely on their generating sets for their electricity supply.
A frustrated commercial tricycle operator who identified himself as Matthias Okon said he was fed up with the arbitrary cost of petrol in Yenagoa.
“Every day, every week it is the same problem of fuel scarcity and long queues in Yenagoa. It is painful and unbearable,” he said.
A bus driver, Mr Yomi, who said he had to sleep at the filling station, urged the government to put in place measures to tackle the issue, including revamping the refineries.
Another driver with one of the transport companies, Mr Nonso Chikwendo, wondered why the government could not fix the refineries as a solution to the fuel situation.
He said, “How can Nigeria be an oil-producing nation with refineries and we will be suffering for fuel? Let them work on the refineries so that there will be fuel.”
Reports quoted the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, to have stated that the Port Harcourt Refinery, which was being revamped, would commence operations in the first quarter of 2024.
Source: The Punch