Fuel scarcity persists in Kano

The prevailing fuel scarcity in Kano State has continued to affect commercial activities in the ancient city. The highly populated commercial city has suffered from acute shortage of fuel supply for months.

Yet, Kano and all its 44 Local Government Areas and 9.38million inhabitants have so far contributed N32.55billion to the Petroleum Support Fund, a subsidy regime introduced by the Federal Government to ensure that fuel is available everywhere in the country.

Kano State still has an outstanding N17.79 billion to contribute to the fund, making a total of N50.34billion it would have contributed to the subsidy fund between 2006 and 2009, which is being deducted arbitrarily, and places the state as the fifth highest contributor to the fund.

Petrol is scarce and expensive

There are two sources of petroleum products supply in Kano, the major marketers and the independent marketers. While the majors sell at the official price of N65 per litre in the metropolis, the independent marketers sell for between N85 and N100/litre at the outskirts of about 10 to 15 kilometers away.

However, fuel is nowhere to be found, because as at the time NEXT visited some of the filling stations, only a handful of them had fuel to sell. This reporter, who went round the city of Kano, could only count about eight filling stations selling fuel, out of more than 200 filling stations in the city.

The attendant result is mayhem at the few stations, unending long queues and loss of valuable time, as well as traffic disorders occasioned by the unruly nature of the gathering of motorists desperate to buy the scarce product in stations like the three NNPC Mega Stations, Oando station and two Total stations.

However, it is very easy to buy fuel on the streets in every nook and cranny of the city for N500 to N600 per gallon of four litres.

Motorists who cannot wait on the queues for hours are being compelled to buy from fuel hawkers at very high costs.

One of those on the queue in one of the NNPC stations, who identified himself as Khalifa Ibrahim, told NEXT in frustration, “I have been here for over four hours. I’m still not close to buying the fuel. It may finish before it gets to my turn, that I don’t know, because I have waited like this for more than four hours a couple of days past and I didn’t get to buy. The situation is terrible. I don’t know what our government is doing about this, We have been suffering since last year,” Ibrahim lamented.

According to Mr. Sani Yau Babura, ex chairman, North West Zone of the Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria, “the situation right now is that Independent Marketers are buying from private depot owners at a price higher than the NNPC’s ex-depot price and as such, the marketers will add the margins for transport from Lagos to Kano or Jigawa state of about N10 per litre to Maiduguri between N15 and N17 per litre. So that is why you see that there are these price differentials.”