The cover picture is how it was yesterday between 7 – 10 am at the Tipper Garage in Dutse on Abuja Bwari Road as caught by Intervention. The queue for fuel at the petrol station on the junction linking the two was such that the side coming to the township was blocked. It was so complete that not even a motor bike could move.
It remained like that for over three hours with everyone trying to get out at the same time.
Federal Road Safety Corps operatives were at work but even then, the gridlock was such that it stretched up to Usman Dam for those coming into town. Those going to Bwari had no problem BUT that is if they could get out of the gridlock at the petrol station.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) has been shouting since the day before yesterday that there would be no fuel price hike in the month of March 2021 but it seems Nigerians suspect another round of ‘Shock therapy’ is ahead. After all, it was a Minister who hinted an impending price rise. No minister could ever contemplate such a hint without express authorization from the highest level of government. Moreover, marketers and their attendants at petrol stations seems to have got every detail about the hike, details and/or signals which were bound to filter down.
Memories of the nasty experiences of the logic of ‘Shock therapy’ can be seen in the panic buying and reckless, anti-traffic behaviour of the average Nigerian when s/he smells it in the ear. It was naively thought that a punitive tactic such as ‘Shock therapy’ was over. It may not have.
If it is ‘Shock therapy’ or a variant of it, it means government will keep pretending that there is no price hike but people will be experiencing scarcity. And the price of petrol and other such products would rise to as much as triple above the contemplated hike level. The misery would reach a point that opposition to a hike no longer makes economic or any sense and the government would have its way. The people would have been shocked into submission.
It was commoner under previous military regimes from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. Some people might have remembered it!
