PHOTO: Fuel Queue Causes Traffic Gridlock At Dutse Alhaji, Abuja

Abuja residents are now daily caught in a traffic gridlock on their way to work and other destinations.

This is the case in different parts of the city and especially along Dutse Alhaji (Tipper Garage), up to Usman Dam near Ushafa and Bwari where passengers in a hurry have to disembark from vehicles to take bike so as to escape the gridlock.

“That filling station around that Tipper Garage, is causing the hold up, and they need to do something about it,” a visibly angry passenger complained while getting out of the car he boarded from Ushafa bridge.

As seen by our correspondent, cars, bikes and tricycles seeking to buy fuel at a petrol station, known as ‘Shafa’ are lining up at the side of the lane that connects residents or travellers to Kubwa Expressway.

Shafa petrol station is cited immediately after the T-junction at Dutse Alhaji (Tipper Garage).

The scenario has forced motorists to pass through that lane , sometimes in one line and then two, with a combination of FRSC officials and Nigeria police and VIO officials trying to control movements at the T junction.

Impatient drivers are taken the other lane and our correspondent observed as of the time of this report, FRSC officials allowing passage of vehicles on the opposite lane.

The petrol station is situated adjacent to the small lane.

Due to cars, tricycles and bikes queuing up to buy petrol there, other vehicles are forced to wait on the road for more than an hour.

As seen by this website, the hold up ends immediately after the petrol station.

THE WHISTLER spoke to an officer of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Dutse Alhaji Unit Command, Fatima Asabe David, operating at the area, to speak on the development.

Pointing her fingers towards the petrol station, she, like other passengers, blamed it for the hold up within that axis.

She said the only solution is to either create another route into the filling station or have it closed when people are leaving for work in the morning.

The FRSC official said, “I said, it’s the filling station, if they can do anything about this filling station. They should close it or the best thing is, they should allow people going to work in the morning.

“So that, in the afternoon, they will open the filling station for people to buy fuel.

“Because this morning hold up, it started from 5 am till now.

“The best solution is to close the filling station, if there is any other way, they can open another way for people to be buying fuel, it will be better because this place, (Tipper Garage Junction), the road is too small, it is not wide.”

Also speaking on the situation, an FRSC official,Bose Onolapo, told this website that the gridlock caused by the filling station is always unmanageable inn the morning hours.

“We dey work here like mad,” she said.