Fuel Scarcity in Abuja and it’s effects on PWDs
The fuel scarcity situation in Abuja hit me badly today. Since morning I was dragging my car with an empty fuel tank from one filling station to another searching for fuel. No fuel. The only one wey I see during the noon wey get fuel, if I join my car in the extremely long queue, I don’t think it would have even reached my turn today.
So I dragged the car to the office like that after unsuccessful lengthy search for fuel and got extremely busy.
Left office around 6.30pm to a popular filling station at asokoro where I usually buy. First one don’t have but the second luckily were downloading fuel from tanker. Because they’re downloading fuel, cars don full everywhere outside it despite that the gates were securely locked.
I couldn’t even see where to park my car so I joined the carelessly scattered queue in the middle of a highway where several other cars were jampacked. As I couldn’t even drag the car back home cos its fuel tank is stark empty.
I was really worried. It was then that I remembered their station manager is person-with-disability-friendly and stepped down from the car to look for him. He was actually sitting close to where I parked. He sent one of his boys to pick my car from the fleet of cars that littered careless around the filling station and even in the middle of the highway and follow a concealed path through a building next to the filling station to drive it in.
That’s how I became lucky and was able to fill my tank to the brim around 9.20pm when they started filling. As I drove out of the filling station, so many cars were still blocking all the road but I managed to pull through. From the look of things, I don’t think those cars outside will be able to get fuel tonight.
Despite knowing the station manager for sometimes now and him being very nice and friendly, I haven’t been able to exchange contacts with him. Today, I did. Guess what? From the name Truecaller showed me after I flashed his line, he’s a northern Muslim.
I’ve always been plain with my words that I appreciate so much the way northerners, especially northern Muslim are people with disability friendly and do things that motivate PWDs and create avenues for us to thrive. This is just an example of it.
Meanwhile, let me go and drop a ‘thank you’ message to him for today.
Be nice and supportive to people with disability. It doesn’t cost a thing.
Chatherine Chi Edeh is a women with disability and the Executive Director Voice of Disability Initiative
Copied from her Facebook page
