Here we go again

It's a week to Christmas and here we are in the middle of our annual year-end petrol shortage. Or is there really a shortage?

The word is that speculation about deregulation and the President's health has led to fuel marketers withholding the product, in case prices go up in January.

So it's not really petrol scarcity, it's petrol unavailability. The petrol is right there in the tankers and in the underground tanks; it's just not where we need it to be - in our fuel tanks.

To be honest, I don't particularly care to know what the reason is this time. Whether the unavailability is due to unions (striking tanker drivers) politics (militants disrupting pipelines) or economics (an increase in pump prices), all that matters is the equation: vehicles minus petrol plus (queues plus black market) equals more stress.

Lagosians are actually quite spoiled; whining and complaining whenever petrol queues appear, yet some cities in the country have experienced such chronic fuel shortage, hoarding and ‘black marketeering' over the years that buying petrol from road side hawkers has become a way of life.

Benjamin and I were zooming home on Tuesday evening when we noticed that there were only a handful of cars lined up outside a petrol station. Sensing an opportunity for a quick refill we manoeuvred ourselves to the end of the queue, figuring it would only be an hour at the most before we found ourselves triumphantly parked at a pump.

The gates were closed, manned by pump attendants who, overnight, had become the most powerful people in town. We sat and sat and sat, keeping a steady eye on the station gates, willing them to swing open and welcome us into the land of plenty. Plenty petrol, that is.

Inside the station, the crowd of Okada riders and black marketers grew, taking up the pump attendants' attention and time while the cars waited impatiently outside. After a while tempers began to rise, with the Okada riders and marketers raising helmets and jerry cans as weapons as they prepared to fight.

After two hours we had moved only a few inches closer to the gate but were reluctant to leave in case they opened as we drove away. I texted a self-pitying message to my mum in Abuja: "They're hoarding petrol again. Been queuing since 5:30pm" To which she replied: "They're hoarding here too" Neither of us clarified who ‘they' were; it didn't really matter because we both understood that ‘they' is anyone who is responsible for causing us misery; anyone who's in charge of the chaos.

It wasn't until I'd listened to Benjamin's Chaka Demus CD for the fourth time straight that I realised how long we'd been sitting outside that petrol station. We were only a couple of cars to the gate when the attendant at the station gates informed us that they had closed.

Naturally, he offered us an alternative. After sitting there for three and a half hours listening to 1990's dancehall music until I was sick of it, we ended up buying petrol on the black market, right outside the station - which is what I should've done in the first place instead of wasting hours of my life watching okada riders fight over petrol.

Benjamin lugged the station attendant's overpriced jerry can of petrol to the car and that was when I realised we didn't have the essential fuel crisis survival kit: no jerry can in the boot, no hose, no funnel. He found a plastic bottle and started looking around for something sharp he could use to fashion out a funnel. We'd finally acquired the prized liquid and yet I still couldn't go home to shower and wash off the smell of petrol, as I'd fantasised. All around us people were guarding their hoses and funnels jealously.

After spending what felt like ages trying to solve the problem, the pump attendant, now one of the most powerful men in town, turned out to be one of the kindest, as he graciously allowed us to take his jerry can home. "This is our take away pack" I joked to Benjamin as we drove off with the jerry can.

Or perhaps the attendant wasn't that kind or generous - it could just be that the margin he made on my purchase of petrol was more than enough to cover the cost of my ‘take away pack.'