From Paul Osuyi, Asaba
As the prevailing fuel scarcity bites harder in Asaba, Delta State capital, two practising journalists have allegedly been brutalised at one of the filling stations along the Benin-Asaba-Onitsha highway.
The journalists working with the state-owned television station, Delta Broadcasting Service (DBS) were monitoring the situation when they were pounced upon by overzealous security personnel.
Chairman of the DBS chapel of the state council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Pere Botu alleged that their staff were injured while the recording camera was destroyed.
Botu said the management of the organisation had already taken up the matter with the state police command.
Meanwhile, our correspondent observed that queues have returned to filling stations where petrol is being dispensed at prices beyond the official pump price per litre.
This is even as management of some filling stations prohibits dispensing the product in jerricans, a development that fuelled sharp practices by pump attendants, who collected extra money from customers to secretly dispense fuel into handy jerricans.
‘If you must refill your jerrican, they will collect extra N100.00 irrespective of the quantity of fuel being bought.
‘And they are selling for N220.00 per litre whether for vehicle or jerrican. In some places, they are selling higher than that amount.
‘The suffering is too much, government should intervene and make the product available, and at a cheaper rate,’ a consumer in one of the filling stations told our correspondent.
However, a few of the mega filling stations with the product we’re selling at the approved pump price of N165.00 per litre.
But such stations witnessed very long queues.