Holidays are over, workers resume work with high transport fares as petrol scarcity continues

Commuters across Lagos returned from their holidays on Monday and Tuesday facing higher than normal transport fares as lingering petrol scarcity forced commercial bus operators who paid above the government-regulated price to jack up the fares.

Our reporters witnessed scenes of commuters haggling with bus operators over bus fares that in some cases rose over 50 per cent on popular routes across the state.

Petrol stations selling at the official price of N165 are seeing long lines of vehicles snaking up major highways while fewer queues were seen in stations selling between N200 and N250 per litre across the state.

Transport fares across various parts of Lagos and Abuja had doubled in price and had maintained a 50 per cent hike due to the lingering scarcity of petrol while some routes witnessed hikes as high as 100 per cent.

A commercial transport operator who plies the Festac/Satellite route in Lagos State said that motorists were struggling with not only a significant increase in the price of petrol but also great difficulty in accessing the product.

He also said that “I will only carry people who will pay the current transport fare to their area because there is no fuel to buy and if my vehicle spoils when carrying them, I am the one to suffer it.”

A passenger who identified himself as Moses said that in his area of Satellite Town, the transport fare to Alakija, Festac had doubled now making it N300 from the former price of N150.

In Yenagoa, Bayelsa state and other cities in the South-South region, petrol is still sold above N165/litre.

Petrol stations in states like Delta are selling at N180/litre and petrol stations in the GRA area of Benin-city, Edo state has been selling at N176/litre over the past few weeks while maintaining the same transportation costs to various destinations within the state.

It was also observed that quite a number of petrol stations in Lagos remained closed for business, apparently due to the unavailability of the product.

Also, those petrol stations that were supplying the product to motorists in Lagos had long queues as motorists jostled to buy the product, especially along major roads in Lagos like a third gate, Alakija where TotalEnergies petrol station is situated.