FUEL SCARCITY IN NIGERIA

Nigeria a country abundantly blessed with natural resources should be a country flourishing with milk and honey but this is very far from the reality. The economy of this once great nation has been in a downward trend for about three decades now. Year by Year, Nigerians work harder for their daily bread but never still get enough of it. The amount of work Nigerians do for a living has no result to show for it.

Several issues spring up seasonally to make the country less bearable for the citizens. Some of these include, Insecurity, power outage, poor health system, lack of basic infrastructures and amenities, petrol scarcity etc. These problems and more have been around before I was born but it gets tougher yearly. I would like to talk about one of the most frequent: fuel scarcity.

After crude has been extracted from the ground, due to the non-functioning refineries In the country, all the crude is sold to other crude processing countries. Refined petroleum products are then bought and imported back into the country. No logic can be made about this process because it lacks iota of reasoning. As a result of the country’s inability to refine fuel, the imports are not enough to reach the demand of Nigerians.

 This then results into a scarcity and then people have to spend so much time in petrol stations struggling to get fuel. This scarcity duration is always unpredictable as it spans from days to months. This year, in Abuja there has been serious scarcity for about 10 months this year. 

This results in so much discomfort to lives and businesses as valuable time is wasted struggling to buy fuel. During this time, the cost of fuel is increased drastically and so making life unbearable for citizens. Due to the lack of stable power, generators are the most common substitute and so a lot of businesses and the society at large needs fuel to function. When this is not readily available, a lot of things are unavoidably put on hold.

At the election of every new government, fuel scarcity has been promised to be put to a very end but all have failed. The people still suffer to buy petrol. When will these days be behind us? nobody would ever know. We have lost faith in our government as all they do is lie to their citizens and enrich themselves. 

In recent years, Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote started to build a new refinery and this project is about 80% completed. It is expected to produce about 500,000 barrels of refined petrol daily which is more than enough to serve the nation and still export. This is the final hope of Nigerians as regards this fuel scarcity problem. If all goes well, the better for Nigerians and otherwise we would continue to wallow in pain.

I personally believe when this new refinery starts operation, we would not have any need importing petrol anymore, this would also be a great source of revenue for the country from the private sector.

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