Most fuel filling stations in Lokoja, the capital of Kogi State, have shut their stations to customers due to incessant power outages.
The development on Sunday made long queues of vehicles return to the few stations dispensing fuel in the Lokoja metropolis.
A motorist, Ahmad Usman, told our correspondent in Lokoja that he had to abandon his car at the fuel station on Friday because the pump attendant could not dispense fuel to customers due to lack of diesel to propel their plant to distribute fuel.
Usman added that the power outage worsened the situation as many of them could no longer use generators because of the high cost of diesel in the absence of electricity.
A petrol attendant who preferred to be called Jimoh said at Total Filling Station in Lokoja that many of them had been confronted with the twin dilemma of the scarcity of fuel and the high cost of diesel to power generators as an alternative to public electricity.
Also, at a fuel filling station in Gadumo, a suburb of Lokoja, the petrol attendant was reported to have stopped selling the product as soon as AEDC took light around 8:30am on Sunday, leaving motorists to their fate.
Coupled with the power outage issue, motorists alleged that some fuel filling stations deliberately hoarded fuel in the afternoon to create artificial scarcity but sold the product to black marketers in the night for brisk business.
Corroborating his disclosure, our correspondent gathered that for some days fare being charged for a distance in most areas in Lokoja had jumped by 80 to 100 per cent, making many residents trek to their various destinations.Â
