Christmas: Travellers groan as fuel scarcity jerk up transport fares nationwide
Story from Haruna YUSUF, Abuja
Christmas and New Year celebrations are two festivals that Nigerians do not joke with.
It’s a period people look forward to with utmost excitement, a time to return to their ancestral villages to relax and meet with friends and relations at home. It is also a period that people usually fix various activities, including development initiatives for the good of their communities. Above all, the period serves as a holiday period, time to take some rest after a vigorous year of struggle in various fields of endeavor.
Plans have changed with the scarcity and high cost of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly known as petrol causing a hike in the prices of goods and services and subjecting Nigerians with weak purchasing power to untold hardship.
The joy of people celebrating Christmas and New Year has been reduced to the lowest level because of this scarcity menace. A private school teacher who doubles as a point of sales operator (pos) when interviewed revealed that she has three children and two dependants, plus her husband and herself making them a family of seven, she said they cannot travel for the Christmas celebration because of the hike in transportation fare.
According to her, ”Before now we used to pay N3000 to Ekiti State but now it is N7000. Multiply this figure by 7, and its a whole lot so we don’t have that kind of money,” she lamented.
On his part, Raymond Chukwu, a member of the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria, FCT Zuba unit, said Nigerians are suffering due to the unprescendented scarcity of fuel and inflation.
He, therefore called on the government to step in and resolve the fuel scarcity and halt the constant increase in the cost of goods and services.
Speaking with example, Chukwu said, ”In the past we used to carry from Zuba to Ekiti State N3000 to N4000, but now its N7000 to 8000 Naira, Onitsha was N10,000 but now its 18,000 Naira, so you can see how it is making life difficult for people”.
In an interview, a passenger who decried the increase in transportation fare said he planned to travel to Delta State and has been to not less than three parks, and was shocked to discover they all have different prices. He said the lack of price regulation or control by the government gives transport agencies an avenue to exploit the masses.
On his part, Osanagha Robinson, Manager of Big Joe Transport Company
FCT, Zuba branch, said his company hardly increase their fare like the other companies do.
”I can tell you that throughout this year we just added N2000 to our fares, it used to be 10,000 Naira to Warri but with the 2000 addition, it Is now 12,000 Naira and our customers are okay with it. So I think government should try and control the prices of goods and services so that there would be decency in the way we do business in Nigeria.”
Recall that the World Bank mentioned that Nigeria is in a worsening situation as economic performance is becoming weaker as inflation persists.
The Washington-based bank said this in its newly released Nigeria Development Update (NDU) which was launched in Abuja in December alongside the Nigeria Country Economic Memorandum.
The NDU report revealed, “Nigeria is in a challenging and deteriorating economic situation. Nigeria’s economic performance has weakened since the previous Nigeria Development Update was published in June 2022 under the title of ‘The Continuing Urgency of Business Unusual’.”
The financial institution also cut Nigeria’s 2022 growth forecast to 3.1 percent from a previous forecast of 3.8 percent.
It said that the revision was due to slow economic growth in the third quarter from a year earlier dragged down by the oil sector and a weak performance in other areas of the economy.
The bank further forecasted growth to slow down by 2.9 percent in 2023 according to the Punch.
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