From Paul Osuyi, Asaba

Long queues of vehicles have resurfaced at filling stations in Asaba as motorists and residents of the Delta State capital scramble to buy Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) also known as fuel at very high rates.

This is coming barely 24 hours that the new president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, announced total withdraw of subsidy from petroleum products.

Our correspondent observed that most petrol stations were locked, a situation that chaos in the few stations that were dispensing fuel.

Stations owned by major market with the product and opted to dispense, were selling a liter of petrol between N230 and N260.

A handful of smaller stations were selling petrol as high as N550 per liter.

Some of the filling stations that were selling at the time of filing this report include Rainoil, Matrix, Northwest, Dwell, Marc Merg and Mobile.

Residents though welcome the initiative to stop subsidy payment, however insisted that the time of implementation was inappropriate.

According to Mr. Andrew Osakwe, Nigerians were yet to recover from effects of the poorly implemented naira note re-design.

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‘”We have not even recover for the economic hardship occasioned by the impact of the introduction of the new naira notes and now removal of fuel subsidy is being implemented.

”I will appeal to the Federal Government to intervene in the pain of struggling to get fuel, not just getting but buying it at a very high rate,” he said.

On his part, Chris Odili said he left his home in the morning trying to get fuel but his efforts remained futile.

“I have visited about six different filling and the filling stations were not selling. I am appealing to government for intervention because, it will be disastrous for the masses,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the sharp increase in the pump price of petrol has had an immediate impact in transportation fares within the metropolis.

Tricycle operators now charge N200.00 for a distance that was hitherto N100.00.