Fuel Stations See Long Queues In Lagos, Ogun As Thieves Vandalise Pipelines

Fuel stations in Lagos and Ogun state, alongside a few more locations in South-Western states, witnessed long queues after thieves vandalized pipelines.

Long queues were sighted at many fuel stations on Oshodi-Ojodu Berger Expressway and on some sections of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on Tuesday as vehicles were waiting to purchase petrol. This also slowed down the movement on the service lane.

The longest queue was formed outside North-West filling station as it sold petrol at N568/litre while other stations like Eterna, NNPCL, TotalEnergies, Mobil sold at N568/litre to N570/litre. Whereas, Conoil, Enyo, and Oando at Berger in Lagos had no fuel to sell.

Akin Akinrinade, Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Satellite Depot, revealed that their depot has not received any product shipments in the past three weeks as the pipeline got vandalized.

"From our end, the issue has been with the pipeline vandalism which we raised an alarm over since July," Akinrinade said, Punch reported. "Satellite depot has not loaded any product in the last three weeks, and whenever there is a problem here, it is going to affect Lagos and the whole of South-West."

He added, "Although I don't know what has been happening in other depots, from what we gathered yesterday, even NNPC Retail has been operating skeletal product dispatching. The NNPC Retail loaded just three to four trucks to Ikoyi on Monday. No product was dispatched to other places. I don't know about other depots."

Such vandalization of crude oil isn't new in Nigeria as previously it was reported that Nigeria may lose $23 billion this year to the crime. Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria, Femi Gbajabiamila noted earlier this year that last year, the country lost $10 billion to crude oil theft.

Fuel theft has been a significant problem in Nigeria for many years. Nigeria was the world's biggest oil-producing country, however, this year the rank has dropped to third as Angola and Libya took over first and second position, respectively.

Aside from theft, the closure of the production facilities has become a major reason for this drop.

Talking about pipeline vandalism, the criminals put a tap into the oil pipelines to steal crude oil like petrol and diesel. The stolen fuel is later sold in the black market, which eventually brings loss to the Nigerian government and oil companies.

Fuel theft is an organized crime in the country where they often have a network for stealing, transporting, and selling stolen fuel.