Nigeria's citizenry line up for kerosene

In Nigeria many are building up camps at gas stations so that they can buy cooking fuel. The situation is so bad that women and children may end up spending their whole day just queuing up to get the now expensive fuel. Most fuel stations sell a liter of kerosene at fifty naira Nigerian money but at the black market (that’s the situation where you buy kerosene at unauthorized sites in the country), kerosene is sold at three times the pump station stipulated price.

Because of this exorbitance and most often the non availability of the petroleum derivative, people in most urban areas have now resulted to using fire wood, coal, and other fuel derivatives as an alternative cooking fuel, despite the tedious routine of using firewood, most women claim that firewood and coal is a far cheaper cooking gas than kerosene which can simply fill the can of a China made cooking stove.

During the course of findings it was discovered that because of the huge crowd that always gather at filling stations many people have to give bribes as high as five hundred naira to pump attendants so that their plastic containers would be filled ahead of others.

Wanting to find out what actually is contributing to kerosene scarcity, I interviewed a marketer who claimed that indeed the product is really not being supplied as it used to be. Siasia a migrant from Kogi state, who sells kerosene at Kawo bus stop in Kaduna state, says he gets his supplies from the refinery so he doesn’t have to queue up like everyone else to buy the light fuel.

“I always go to the refinery to look for supplies in drums which costs fourteen thousand naira but recently, the price has shot up to eighteen or nineteen thousand naira per drum. Since the increase, people have been blaming us for escalating the selling price and even accusing us of hoarding the petroleum derivative but we are not to blame,” he explained.

He also said that he is not in the position to point out what is causing the increase in the buying price and that since this is the only business he knows how to do, he wouldn’t mind a constant supply of the product so that the profit he makes would keep ‘body and soul together’.

He also added that he does not encounter any problem when he needs supplies, what he doesn’t like however, is the endless abuses from customers who complain that they (marketers) are the ones who deliberately cause scarcity so as to inflate the price. “Yes we do get a lot of money from the sale of kerosene but it is only enough to see to our needs” he confirmed.

Attempts to talk to authorities of major petroleum stations in the metropolis met with stiff opposition as many refused this reporter's audience but with the impending long queues that are daily being mounted at various gas stations across the city, people are left to ponder over the question, is kerosene going to remain within the grasp of the common man?