A number of Nigerians have lost faith in petrol stations owned by individuals due to, among other things, misleading metering systems, and a fraction of the country’s population doesn’t visit gas stations that are not household brands in the oil and gas industry. However, stations managed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), the country’s oil sector regulator, have a great deal of respect.

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An X user, @lukemonowolabi, created a thread on December 24 to convey a worrisome account about a NNPCL fuel station in Lagos State. In order to determine the veracity of his claim, I visited two NNPCL filling stations along Ojuelegba road in Lagos State.

A tale of two NNPC fuel stations…On the left is the station at Palmgrove on the way to Obankoro while the one on the right is at Fadeyi on the way to Yaba. I filled my 10 litre jerry can to the brim at the Fadeyi station & I paid ₦6,550, I also filled the pic.twitter.com/zn1q8RxQmw

— Lukemon Owolabi (@lukemonowolabi) December 24, 2023

According to the X user, he filled up his 10-liter container with petrol at an NNPCL retail station in Palmgrove for N1,000 more than he did at an NNPCL station in Fadeyi.

FADEYI NNPCL STATION

On January 10, I headed to Fadeyi, towards Ojuelegba in Lagos State. The two stations I targeted are located along the same route: one is on the left in Fadeyi, towards Ojuelegba, while the other is on the right in Palmgrove when returning from Ojuelegba and heading towards Ikorodu.

The NNPCL fuel station in Fadeyi is a stone’s throw from the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) stand in the area and directly opposite the only over-head pedestrian bridge before the bus stand. From there, I purchased N2,000 worth of fuel in a five-litre container. The metre dashboard indicated that I got 3.53 litres for the amount.

Before turning to attend to me, the salesman had sold fuel to a motorist. While attending to the motorist, I watched as he (the salesman) calmed a visibly enraged colleague of his who had a disagreement with another worker at the station.

PAMLGROVE NNPCL STATION

On Tuesday, January 9, I went to the Palmgrove NNPCL station with the intention of buying N2,000 worth of petrol, the same quantity I had previously purchased from the Fadeyi retail station.

The often-quiet filling station had eight fuel dispensers, but only two were in operation on Tuesday. I walked up to the salesman sitting on the base of a dispenser on my left after I had seen that the operational dispenser close to the entrance of a restaurant on the premises of the station had two cars waiting to buy fuel. Also sitting on the concrete base of the fuel pump was a black-complexioned, averagely tall man, who I suspected was a supervisor at the station.

I had bought fuel from the said salesman twice, so his face and that of the black-complexioned man were familiar to me. Having met consistently three times between December 27 and January 9 at the same pump, it appeared to me that the station’s management does not regularly repost attendants to man different dispensers. At the station, 3.52 litres of fuel was sold to me for N2,000.

DIFFERENCE

For the avoidance of doubt, I purchased fuel from Palmgrove on January 9 and proceeded to Fadeyi the following day. I had noted the level of the Palmgrove fuel in the container before emptying it and making my way to Fadeyi with the same container.

The mark on the container showed a stark difference in the quantity of petrol acquired from the two stations, which is hard to overlook. If the difference was limited to the slight disparity in litres, one might explain it away. But that was not the case. The difference also manifested in the volume of petrol that entered the same plastic jerrycan. In marking and taking note of the levels of the content, my method was clear: I placed the container on the same platform to settle down and show a consistent pattern.

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PREVIOUS VISITS

A few days after the viral tweet was made, I had earlier visited these two filling stations late in December 2023 with two different containers.

While in Fadeyi on December 26, I filled up a jerrycan with N2,567.36. At the point when the petrol was about to spill over, the machine showed that 4.52 litres of petrol was already in the container.

With a fuel-filled container and an empty one, I went to the second filling station in Palmgrove. I saw signs of inactivity there, so I asked an attendant at the station’s kerosene dispenser why they were not selling fuel. He told me they had no fuel.

“Do you have an idea of when you will have fuel?” I asked him. He retorted, “I don’t know o.” I left his space and asked a few people around to find an answer to my question. A seller of consumables in the vicinity said she knew there was fuel in the station but attendants were not selling it.

I probed her further to understand why, and she said, “I guess they are still on Christmas break. They may start selling by evening.” I was not convinced. How would all sales agents at a fuel station go on a Christmas break? An NNPCL station for that matter!

On my return to the fuel station on Tuesday evening, I noticed a 33,000-capacity tanker with NNPCL insignia discharging its content into the station’s underground storage. I left after I was convinced that it might get late in the night before they would start selling.

The following morning (December 27), I visited again and still saw that petrol was not being sold. I walked up to three men sitting on the base of a fuel dispenser. As if they had pre-planned their response, I had not completed my question when one of them said “No petrol!”

That moment, I sensed a tense atmosphere. I guessed the viral tweet had impacted them negatively. Perhaps the tweet had invited a regulatory check or any higher authority’s attention.

Having earlier seen the station take delivery of petrol, I was more determined to return. So I was back in the evening, and I was lucky to get petrol this time. NNPCL stations are usually busy with customers, but this particular station was almost deserted. Only two customers, including me, were at the station at the same time.

I first told the attendant to sell five litres into the second jerrycan. When he was done, the dispenser display board was reading N2,840, approximately. I then instructed him to fill up the container instead, and he added additional N272 worth of petrol.

As I was paying in cash, I summed the two amounts and paid N3,120. This amount was N553 more than the amount I spent filling up the first five-litre container at the Fadeyi station.

While summing up N2,800 and N272 using my phone’s calculator, the man I had earlier mentioned to have appeared as a supervisor stepped forward to interfere in my conversation with the attendant. He inquired from the attendant what he was discussing with me, and he explained to him. I noticed the man was closely circling me in a suspicious manner, as if he wanted to see if I was truly doing a summation. This time, I was able to connect the dots about my earlier suspicion about the impact of the X thread.

On December 30, I used the same jerrycans to buy petrol of N2,000 from the two stations. There was a clear inequality in the quantities sold to me. I got more quantity at Fadeyi Station than I got at Palmgrove.

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Both stations claimed to sell a litre for N568, the approved pump price at all NNPCL mega and retail stations. But somehow, one has found a way to cheat unsuspecting customers.

Aside from my major finding, what also stood out for me was the neatness of the Fadeyi station and the long queue of customers I regularly met, which suggested that customers get good value for their money at the station. Away from this, on my first visit, a salesman made me part with N200 as “owo odun” (festival gift).

On my second visit to the same Fadeyi station, a female attendant told me pointblank that I had to pay N50 extra, saying that is “how we collect it”. I told her to complete the sale and ended up paying N100 instead of N50.