Gov Uzodinma’s ‘Joke’ Sparks Fresh Fuel Scarcity In Imo

…All Five South-East States May Be Affected

Three days after petroleum marketers reached an agreement with the Imo State Government to suspended their strike, fuel scarcity has continued to bite harder in the state.

THE WHISTLER reports that despite the intervention, many fuel stations remained closed as of Tuesday morning in Owerri, the state capital.

Our correspondent gathered that after the association of independent petroleum marketers in the state suspended their strike, the association of fuel tanker drivers commenced their own industrial action and thereby worsened the scarcity of premium motor spirit in the state.

The petroleum marketers’ strike had bordered on the state government’s alleged refusal to obey a court to compensate one of their members whose filling station was demolished during the tenure of former Governor Rochas Okorocha.

But after a meeting with the state government, the petroleum marketers agreed to suspend their strike for two weeks to allow the government address their grievances.

However, the tanker drivers are said to be angry with the state governor, Hope Uzodinma, over a statement he made regarding fuel scarcity in the state.

They are said to have refused to supply PMS to fuel stations over remarks the governor made about the association.

Governor Uzodinma, during an appearance on Channels TV, had criticised the tanker drivers for doing “things that are not proper”. He also told residents that they could travel to nearby states to buy fuel.

“The petroleum tankers…it’s just a very simple thing, people have chosen to do things that are not proper. A road contractor, not even during my regime destroyed some parts of a filling station at Orlu and the owner of the station took the contractor to court. Imo state government was just a party, the 4th defendant in the case.

“Ridiculously, a judge ordered that Imo State Government should pay the contractor some money in excess of 100 million. This case, Imo State Government is not the main defendant. However, this judgement was given during my time. What we did was to issue notice of appeal, applied for stay of execution.

“Then the owner of the gas station being a tanker driver took undue advantage of his relationship with the association and got the tanker drivers to embark on strike,” the governor had said.

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This website gathered that following reports that the fuel tankers were planning to embark on strike, panic buying of petrol had led to fresh scarcity of PMS in the state.

During a Hot FM 99.5 radio programme monitored by THE WHISTLER on Tuesday, the secretary of the state’s petroleum marketers and dealers’ association, Chidiebere Ezeji, blamed the fresh fuel scarcity on tanker drivers in the state.

Ezeji, who phoned in during the programme, said the situation was caused by a “joke” the governor made regarding residents travelling to neighboring states to get fuel.

“I guess Imolites are just panicking over nothing. As it stands now, members of the association has opened their filling stations and we are rendering services, but the only challenge we have is that many of us have ran out of stock as a result of the petroleum tanker driver’s embargo on delivery of product into Imo state.

“For us the marketers we are ready to serve the public, but if you sell and you run out and you are not getting stuck, what do you do, it’s to close shop and be waiting till when you get delivery.

“So, that is the situation of things as at now. But I’m quite surprised at how people are panicking because we still have some quantity of petrol in Imo state that will carry the state for at least a couple of days before it gets too bad.

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When asked to explain in details what he meant by the tanker drivers’ embargo on petroleum product, he said: “Okay you know before now, there was a problem that the petroleum tanker drivers had with Imo state government, so, they were actually the main cause of the situation that we had last week.

“They suspended delivery of products into Imo state because of an issue that the state government has with one of their founding members and a board of trustee member of their union.

“The MD of Sunas petroleum at Orlu, whose filling station was demolished in 2014 during the urban renewal program of the former governor of Imo state.

“So, we’ve pleaded with them to see how we can ameliorate the challenges of Imolites, but they tend to be so head on, in fact as at Friday after the meeting we had with Mr. Wilcox the DSS director, he pleaded with them and said please, could you allow this trucks to  offload product and then he will take it up from there and they listened to him.

“But then, there was this press conference that his excellency had and during that press conference he jokingly I know he didn’t mean any harm, he was just in his usual way of joking said well that Imolites shouldn’t be worried about getting products that they should go to neighboring states that are equidistant to Imo state.

“It was that comment that provoked them, and they have now sanctioned the whole five south eastern states. So, as it stands now its not going to be only an Imo state problem, it’s going to affect all the other states of the south east if the situation is not handled before long,” added Ezeji.