Fuel is a material such as coal, gas or oil that is burned to produce heat or power. A fuel is considered good or valuable if it has a low ignition temperature and it produces a large quantity of heat and has high calorific value. Gasoline, diesel fuel, bio- diesel and ethanol are common types of fuel. Scarcity is defined as a gap between the resources supply and limitless wants in consumers. Fuel scarcity implies that the demand and use of fuel are high than the actual supply or potential quantity of resources.
The seemingly perennial shortage of fuel in this blessed country of ours, the so called sixth producer of crude oil in the whole world has become such a leprous stigma on the nation that everyone is almost becoming ashamed of confessing that they belong to Nigeria. As far as my memory can carry me despite the tenderness of my age, time when petroleum station throughout Nigeria distributed free calendars to their regular customers, that is, motorist who regularly patronized them.
Now, it is a matter for regret that a country which used to flow with petroleum products like milk and honey in Canaan for the Israelites, has now become a desert as drab and lifeless as the feed sea. in terms of the products with which we have been endowed by God . There is no doubt that we own a nation that is qualified to be a world power, considering the enormity of our human material and natural resources, had we those who could rightly manage them for the benefit of all, instead of enjoying the real substance of the blessings which God has been kind to bestow on us, we have been made to work like horses and eat like ants.
What a pity!
What we have lacked since independence is the sense of honesty by which we have allowed the wrong type of people to manage our system economically, socially and politically. Right now, there are enough evidence that our one time leaders who for long misled us by sheer force and threat of the gun butt and bullet, some time in the past were those who knew nothing about social welfare. Hence, like all other sectors of our life having been ruined by the mismanagement of our ignorant leaders, the oil sector was pruned to satisfy the whims and caprices of those who were in power and the few powerful supporters from selected areas of our society.
As of now, we are left with the substance of that Yoruba adage which says” the knife has cut and wounded the child before he could throw it away”. This is saying that those who have mismanaged us for some many years have done their worst but we are still in order if we can remove the yoke they have placed on our necks. They are our people, we should struggle to place them where they rightly belong and get them replaced with serious leaders and representatives.
To say that some past leaders have been a jinx on Nigeria, is saying the obvious. The soldiers must be returned to the barracks and made permanently interned there, so that we can have peace in the country, while corrupt politicians must be shown the way out.
Quite apart from the above explanation, a cursory look at the situation of things in this country is enough to prove that hoarding of essential commodities, petrol inclusive, has become a way of life for the majority of our traders. Such people are those who revel in making life difficult for others. They create artificial scarce by claiming that they have no supplies from original sources. Such are people who have no fear of God and just want to get rich by all means.
Nigerians are now tired of the government of rotten elements of our society, that is, those who struggle to get elected by all means, mannered or unmannered. We are tired of those who struggle to become leaders in order to siphon our treasuries instead of getting elected to serve the people. If we have the right caliber of people like late leaders in persons of Azikwe , Awolowo, AhmaduBello , Nigeria would have a sigh of relief from the mad ambition of so called leaders who are out to suck us death instead of making a life better for us.
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