48 Hours To Christmas, Lagos Traffic Jam Enters Day Two

Chaotic traffic scenes continued in Lagos, the nation’s commercial capital on Saturday morning with commuters spending hours on the road just two days to Christmas.

The situation is made worse by long queues of vehicles at filling stations in most parts of the state owing to the scarcity of the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol.

The slow movement of cars stretches as far as the Ojota axis as more commuters get on to the ever busy Lagos-Ibadan expressway on their way out of Lagos State for the yuletide celebrations.

Meanwhile, it appears the situation is getting worse for Nigerians travelling from Lagos to other parts of the country at this time of the year as the lingering fuel crisis spills into other states.

This comes in spite of assurances from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC) said they have made enough supply of products to last several weeks.

The fuel situation across the country has been a major concern to the citizens and their leaders, a development that has triggered blames from the critics of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.

PDP Tells Buhari To Stop Nigerians’ Sufferings, Resolve Fuel Scarcity

In his reaction, Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) government of deliberately punishing Nigerians with fuel scarcity to achieve its alleged planned increment of petrol pump price from N145 to at least N185 per litre.

He also called on President Buhari to resign as the Minister of Petroleum over what he described as his “nonchalant attitude” towards ending fuel scarcity experienced in the country.

“Like I said a few days ago, what the Federal Government is doing is to create scarcity so that Nigerians will be willing to buy at any price, provided the product is made available.

“It was to achieve this planned increment of petrol pump price that they restricted the supply of petrol to NNPC alone,” Fayose claimed on Friday in a statement issued his media aide, Lere Olayinka.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had also said it was not enough for the President to put the blames of the fuel scarcity at the doorsteps of marketers while Nigerians continue to suffer untold hardship.

The party, through its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, challenged President Buhari as the Petroleum Minister to find a quick solution to the lingering fuel scarcity now ravaging all parts of the country.

The All Progressive Congress (APC), on its part, apologised to Nigerians for the inconvenience the situation may have caused.

The party, however, noted that there was actually no fuel scarcity, rather, some persons have hoarded the product for selfish reasons.