Fuel Scarcity Disrupts School Resumption In Ogun

The ongoing fuel scarcity in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital on Monday disrupted the resumption of students for third term academic activities.

Public and private schools in the state on Monday resumed after observing the second term break, but hundreds of students were not able to go to school due to unavailability of public transport following fuel scarcity.

Our correspondent who monitored school resumption observed that many schools recorded low turn out of students.

Fuel scarcity had last week hit major cities of Ogun state as many filling stations closed gates, refusing to dispense fuel to customers.

Few stations who were dispensing fuel sold between N600 to N750 per litre to customers, leading to long queues.

On Monday, many students were seen trekking back to their houses when they could not get taxies and motorcycles to convey them to their schools.

A taxi driver, Akande Opeyemi who spoke with our correspondent lamented that, he could no longer continue to buy fuel at exorbitant price from black market.

“Today, someone wanted to sell five litre fuel for me at the rate of N7,000, but I can’t afford that, how much do I make as a taxi driver?

“I don’t think that our leaders understand the pains that we are going through because they don’t buy fuel and they don’t queue.

“Now schools have resumed and students are unable to go back to school, even my own children are at home, I can’t take them to school because I don’t have fuel in my car”, Akande said.

A filling station manager, Adigun Peter blamed the scarcity on panic buying following NNPC plan to phase out fuel importation.

“The government has not come out to say categorically what is causing the scarcity, but no doubt Nigeria will never go back to importation, this is the problem of stepping down importation and relying solely on our own.

“NNPC has given us a window that we should go and empty our imported fuel so that the NNPC price regime can take its full course, thereby causing panic buying and it has now become survival of the fittest.

“It has taken this station over three weeks to get just one supply and at a very exorbitant rate”, Adigun said.