The situation is already taking its toll on citizens and the country’s commercial nerve centre.

Nigeria is being crippled by fuel shortage that the country has been experiencing for more than a month and her banks have shortened opening times, flights have been cancelled and phone companies may restrict services, reports BBC. Over the weekend, two of the country’s leading mobile phone companies, MTN and Airtel, warned that the fuel scarcity could affect their services as they were finding it difficult to supply diesel to the base stations.

At press time yesterday, traffic on the roads was also reportedly reducing as many fuel stations had stopped selling petrol and there were long queues at places where they are selling petrol. Meanwhile, many domestic flights have been cancelled and some international flights are having to land in neighbouring countries to refuel even as radio stations are also restricting their broadcasts and some have gone off air altogether.

According to a Nigerian-based Thisday newspaper, what started out as protest by oil marketers and tanker drivers over the non-payment of outstanding subsidy claims last month, has now snowballed into a bigger crisis brought on by the ongoing strike by senior and junior staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), long considered the supplier/operator of last resort in the country.

The crisis was worsened when tanker drivers under the aegis of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) section of NUPENG withdrew tankers from the roads, thus halting the distribution of products imported by the NNPC, in protest against the non-payment of their salaries and haulage fees by the marketers.

Expectedly, the energy crisis characterised by the absence of gas, electricity, petrol, diesel, kerosene and aviation, is causing maximum damage to the economy of Africa’s largest oil producer, with reports yesterday May 25, 2015 that four persons lost their lives in Lagos as a result of the energy crisis.

Thisday newspaper reported that some of the worst hit companies include Dangote Cement plants at Ibese in Ogun State and Gboko in Benue, which have been forced to stop production due to the unavailability of diesel and gas to run the factories. Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, in a chat with the local media noted that “his cement plants at Ibese and Gboko have been closed down while the 10-million metric-ton plant at Obajana in Kogi State is operating at minimal capacity.”

Analysts say as Nigerians grapple with the worst energy crisis ever to befall the nation, there is very little doubt that the subsidy regime that has been fostered on the nation by the labour movements and some sections of the media can no longer be sustained. And this is one of the major challenges on the table of new Nigerian President-elect, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari as he takes office at the end of the week.