PETROLEUM Tanker Drivers, PTD, branch of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, has said that Nigerians will for now continue to tolerate the tanker drivers, especially on the ever-busy Apapa Oshodi Expressway until the government provides enough parking space for the tankers.

The Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, the agency saddled with oil industry regulation and issuance of depot licences said that NUPENG members under the PTD have defied the Petroleum Act of 2002.

THE perennial chaotic traffic which afflicts the Coconut-Mile 2 axis of the ever-busy Apapa – Oshodi expressway has remained a constant source of nightmare and frustration to road users, stakeholders and residents of the area.

HOWEVER, while responding to Vanguard’s enquiries over the telephone, the Chairman Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, DAPPMA, Chief Sylvanus Okoli, said he was certain that the traffic congestion caused by tanker drivers was as a result of the unusual rush typical of the ‘Nigerian me-first’ approach and nothing out of the ordinary.

SINCE the first commercial production of oil in Nigeria in 1956, it has signalled the beginning of a profound transformation of Nigeria’s political and economic landscape. Since the 1970s, oil has accounted for over 80 per cent of the Nigerian government’s revenue and 95 per cent of the country’s export earnings.