By Nik Ogbulie
Indications from the preparations by Nigerians for the yuletide paint very gloomy pictures of life during the most popular Christian celebration known to history, as many Nigerians cannot afford the usual transportation to visit their kinsmen across the country.
The unaffordable transportation cost caused by the very high fuel cost since the last four months have been blamed for the development which seems to be the major challenge to Christians and their friends who see the annual event as the major prelude to the 2025 New Year celebrations.
There are strong indications that the development will invariably affect the New Year celebrations and a package of many other activities and engagements like weddings, burials , cultural displays and other funfairs associated with the usually very long end-of-year holidays tagged with the celebrations.
Reports from across the country have indicated an over 100% rise in transport cost from any part of the country. This becomes very unbearable as transporters have indicated that return fairs after the year would attract additional increases as many fuel stations would be on holidays even as Nigerians are in doubt if the major fuel suppliers ( NNPC and Dangote) will sell their products at the current price considering their very unpredictable price rulings since the last three months.
Our Economic Intelligence reports indicate that there would be some supply glitches, especially between end of December and end of January arising from what downstream traders describe as usual technical manipulations from the producer siting forex instability and transport logistics as the pipelines remain in very poor conditions.
Our reports from the abodes of the low and middle income Nigerians explain that trips to wherever remain on-hold as families cannot afford to travel as a group , but have rather decided to be dismembered in such a way that only fathers and mothers can travel, denying the children the usual brown and bravador that have been the hallmark of Xmas .
The development has started giving more serious indications as students travelling home on holidays are now using open trucks and even fuel tankers as they cannot afford the luxury of conventional human transport vehicles.
Vehicle transport owners do not have any answer to the belief that the development may become better , as they pass vote on no confidence on the major fuel supply sources whom they accused of habouring some agenda that may not be able to encourage a stable fuel price in Nigeria. They are of the opinion that the NNPC and Dangote have positioned high production cost as major issues and may not improve on the current pricing mode based on the fact that there are many issues in the economy that can be considered as agents and contents of bloated production in the industry. They are of the opinion that the major suppliers may have succeeded in boxing Nigerians to a corner with the seeming high production cost conspiracy theory.
It could be noted that Nigerians may have been disappointed as this development is coming at the time they reasoned that the era of price and availability issues would have been over, considering the hope raised at the beginning of the Dangote Petrochemical Complex about ten years ago.
Nigerians have continued to express some negative emotional outburst over the fuel price issue which they likened to the idea of bringing a new thing to the country only for it to become a pain in the arse. This development, according to them, earns similarity with the cost of cement products which also had its price shot up when a huge expansion visited the sector with the anticipation for price reduction. Cement price is now about N14,000 per bag from N2,000 some five years ago. They seem not to consider the forex dilemma as any reason for the new and embarrassing cost structure of fuel due to an assumption that an adequate strategic project plan should have taken care of all the unforeseen developments. They indicated that a huge project like Dangote Refinery must abhor certain incidentals that could arise from a country’ poor economy.
However, many Nigerians have not developed any Xmas travel plan as the uncompromising fuel price structure continues to renain obstinate.
In the past, Nigerians in the remote parts of the regions blame security issues while considering Xmas plans, but today they feel that very harsh fuel price is the big elephant in the room.
