Petrol Scarcity: Fight Oil Cabals, Labour Tells Buhari

The labour in Ekiti State has pleaded with President Muhammadu Buhari to fight the cabals causing persistent oil scarcity in the country, for his change agenda to come to fruition.
Labour, under the auspices of Public Service Joint Negotiating Council, said the one month petrol scarcity has begun to erode the President’s popularity and the confidence Nigerians reposed in his government to bring desired changes in the system.

Speaking in Ado Ekiti on Saturday, JNC Secretary in Ekiti, Ayodeji Oladele, said what Buhari promised Nigerians was a new lease of life, urging him to muster political will to be able to deal with cabals in oil sector bringing unnecessary hardship to innocent Nigerians.
Oladele posited that what the Minister of State for Petroleum and the Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu told Nigerians was that there was sufficient petrol in circulation, which suggested that the product was being hoarded to force the price up for marketers to make outrageous profit.
The JNC scribe, who is also the Southwest coordinator of the Agriculture and Allied Employees Union of Nigeria said: “When the Minister was leading a task force to effect compliance in Abuja last week, what he said was that the product was being hoarded.
“He even visited some petrol stations and checked their underground tanks to ascertain their compliance with the directive of the NNPC. Now that the government clearly knew that some people were out to sabotage the government, going by what the Minister said, then it is instructive for President Buhari to take decisive action against these oil merchants who have entrenched themselves in the system and causing problems for successive governments”, he said.
Meanwhile, petrol scarcity has begun to bite harder in Ado Ekiti metropolis, as most independent petrol stations now perform dusk operation, which only last for between 5 and 6.30pm.
Aside the long queues being noticed in few stations that were ready to sell the product, petrol could only be bought at evening time by motorists in many of the stations, with the exception of NNPC and its subsidiary stations.
The threat issued by Governor Ayodele Fayose last week that any station found hoarding the product would be sealed off has not dissuaded the petrol dealers from continually causing hardship by rendering skeletal services; with prices ranging between N105 and N110 per litre.
- ThisDay