Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt

a Total petrol station: no fuel sale in Port Harcourt

Four days after the Nigerian government ordered that the pump price of petrol should be between N86 and N86.50, retailers in  Port Harcourt, the Rivers State Capital, have refused to comply.

Rather some petrol stations are selling  it for between N130 to N145  per litre.

Stations such as  Silverloop,Unity,and Parflox  located on Chief Godspower Make Road,off Eliozu axis in Obio-Akpor local Government area, a suburb of Port Harcourt have simply ignored the government order, selling at N145. Some station owners said they were dispensing old stock.

At Amanda Petrol station in Rukpokwu the  price was N130.

There was no sale at  Total,Mobil,Forte Oil and two NNPC petrol stations in Rumuodamaya, headquarters of Obio-Akpor local Government. The stations  were under lock and key.

A taxi Cab Driver,Tunde Makinde, who plies between Rukpokwu and Airforce bus stop said  the high cost of the fuel for his car is affecting his daily returns as he spends much of his daily earnings on petrol.

Comrade Chika Onuegbu,the Rivers State branch Chairman of Trade Union Congress,TUC, criticised the DPR,  the monitoring and enforcement agency of NNPC and the Rivers State Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources for abandoning the consumers of petroleum products in the state to the greedy marketers.

“The Rivers state Government is not doing enough in the area of monitoring of the sale of Petroleum products in the state leaving their duty of care for the citizens of the state in the way they are being exploited by Petroleum products marketers

“The DPR is also not doing enough. We don’t want a situation where few greedy marketers hold the people of the state to ransom. They start doing their job by sanctioning petrol stations flouting the orders of the federal government for reduction of pump price of petrol in state”, said Onuegbu.