NEDU MARK, YENAGOA
Barely four days for President Goodluck Jonathan to handover to the incoming administration of the President elect, Muhammudu Buhari, his kinsmen in Otueke community and it’s environs in Bayelsa state started buying petrol at between N250 and N400 per litre.
this was due to strike by oil marketers which has now been called off.
Before the announcement of the end of the strike action, managers of Guarantee Trust Bank, GTB and the telecommunication company, MTN, had informed residents of Bayelsa state that they would be off the market on Tuesday due to scarcity of diesel to power their plants.
GTB management in Yenagoa said the bank would close to the public by 1pm on Tuesday, while a text message from MTN read: “dear customers due to the diesel scarcity nationwide you may experienced degrade service, we are working hard to address the situation, please bear with us.”
Black marketers in the city as at Monday, were selling a litre of petrol for N400.
Following the hike in the price of petroleum products in Yenagoa, civil servants and students started trekking long distances to their workplaces and schools as the state experienced long queues of vehicles searching for the scare products.
The hike in the price of petrol in the President’s own state has also forced commuters to pay through their noses, as much as N1,500 for a two hour journey to Port Harcourt and N2000 to Owerri, Imo state capital, while drivers charged N200 per drop for intra city shuttles.
Our correspondent reports that most homes in the city now sleep in darkness as generator owners can scarcely buy fuel to power their homes.
Most eateries and drink spots also closed to business in Yenagoa even as prices of foodstuffs and other commodities skyrocketed.
The state had been experiencing long weeks of power outage and phone owners, laptop users and owners of other electrical devices started paying N200 to charge their devices.
The difficult situation in the state equally forced business centers and Internet providers to shut down their services to the public pending when the pump price of petroleum products would be reversed to the official prices.
