Motorists and several other residents of Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital Thursday groaned under the hardship of fuel scarcity which almost paralysed commercial activities in the town.
Private and commercial vehicle owners have to travel across the length and breadth of the State capital before getting Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to buy at outrageous rate.
Virtually all the filling stations located in and outside Ado-Ekiti were under lock and key, while the few ones with the commodity sold at N110 per litre contrary to N97 controlled price.
This development, however, engendered long queue of vehicle and motorbikes, fondly called Okada in few filling stations suspected to have petrol in their tanks, even when they are not operating.
As early as 6.am vehicle owners and motorcyclists were seen Thursday queuing up at some of the petrol stations, whose attendants have not resumed to work at the time.
However, the state Commissioner for Information, Hon. Funminiyi Afuye, said the current issue had assumed a national dimension and that the situation was not peculiar to Ekiti State alone.
Afuye said the government is monitoring the situation closely, promising that appropriate step would be taken to reverse the trend in due course.
In some of the filling stations visited by journalists, car owners alleged that the dealers are hoarding their products in anticipation that President Goodluck Jonathan-led government might remove oil subsidy, so that Nigerians can pay more.
Some of them said: "We suspected that the long queue of vehicles seen in some filling stations in Abuja must have caused this. The dealers might see the situation as strange and guessed that it might be a sign that President Goodluck Jonathan is planning to remove oil subsidy out-rightly and increase the pump price beyond N97 per litre."
However, this development has not led to hike in the price charged by both commercial drivers and motorcyclists, as they still carry their passengers at the normal price of N50 per trip.
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