Fuel scarcity halts traffic movement in Lagos

– Lagos is currently experiencing heavy traffic situation

– Motorists storm petrol stations in search for PMS 

The desperate attempt by motorists to get petrol in the city of Lagos has compounded the perennial traffic congestion problems of the city. As motorists make frantic efforts to get the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) especially in the heart of the city, most parts of the capital Ikeja were locked down all through today April 4. There was heavy traffic presence around the popular Ikeja bus stop towards the GRA. The situation is the same around the General Hospital all through to Maryland as commuters spend the better part of their day on the road. The situation got worse as motorists queue on the road with a stretch mounting into kilometres, a situation a driver who gave his name as Olakitan Faleye lamented he spent the night in his car on a fuel queue. “I have been here since lastnight. I slept in the car and today i am yet to get petrol; this is sad,” he said. Meanwhile, no less than 10 fuel hawkers popularly known as black market sellers have been arrested by the Lagos state taskforce. The men were nabbed on Sunday April 3 at the Oshodi and Ikeja areas for allegedly obstructing traffic with eight jerrycans of fuel were impounded from the suspects. It was reported that 25 suspects were initially arrested by the task force, but after screening, 15 suspects, including 10 fuel hawkers, were found culpable.

Fuel attendants try in vain to stop motorists from gaining entrance into the station forcefully.

A generating set is also on the ‘queue’.

Traffic around Opebi link road.

A LASTMA official tries to calm impatient motorists.

Queue has taken over a section of the road on Mobolaji Bank Anthony way, Ikeja.

Dress for less Microsoft Lumia 650 review

Introduction

The Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL provided the answer to the platform's fans starved for quality hardware and the complete flagship experience. The budget-friendly Lumia 550 that launched alongside didn't get as much attention, but served its purpose just fine - introducing the new Windows 10 to the masses.

Now, everyone will agree this is far from a complete lineup and, a few months later, Microsoft is ready to do something about it. The Lumia 650 is a gorgeous looking phone - we can't think of a better way to start filling the blanks.

It is amazing how much of a style difference a bit of metal can make. The Lumia 650 looks much more refined than any Lumia device to date (including the Nokia Lumia 830, which too flaunted a metal frame). Actually, we might as well go ahead and say it - the Lumia 650 looks better than its flagship siblings, the Lumia 950 and 950 XL.

So, if all that hotness is available for less than $200, what's the catch? To put it gently, the internals don't quite do justice to the classy exterior.

Key features

• Windows 10 Mobile
• Aluminum frame around polycarbonate body with an exchangeable back cover
• Slim and surprisingly lightweight body
• 5.0 inch OLED display with 720p resolution and 297ppi
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 chipset, quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7, 1GB of RAM
• 16GB of built-in memory
• 8 MP, f/2.2, 28mm main camera with a single LED flash
• 5 MP, f/2.2 front camera capable of 720p video recording
• Cat. 4 LTE (150/50Mbps); Wi-Fi b/g/n; Bluetooth 4.1; GPS/GLONASS/BDS; microUSB
• 2,000mAh battery capacity

Main disadvantages

• Entry-level chipset
• No 1080p video recording
• Rather low battery capacity
• No support for Windows 10 Continuum

A punchy AMOLED screen does wonders for the overall impression - it's a Windows phone after all with plenty of black throughout the UI - and that's actually not where the good stuff ends. A solid 16GB of inbuilt storage is good enough to get you started and for everything else, there's a memory card slot. A fairly wide selfie camera is on the plus side as well.

Unfortunately, the product team didn't have much budget left after these had to resort to using entry-level hardware, which has resulted in a rather unbalanced end product. It's not that the raw processing power is not enough - Windows smartphones are known to be quite frugal. But the choice of chipset has limited other aspects of the phone experience - the absence of 1080p video recording is one of them.

Obviously, LTE support was a higher priority than high-res video for the intended markets and demographics. Anyway, the compact and sturdy Lumia 650 will certainly get a lot of attention from budget-conscious users.

We'll have a look at what you will be getting with the Lumia 650 on the following pages. This review is a little shorter than usual but hopefully sharp and to the point.

BBM adds message retraction, timed messages to free version

BlackBerry has updated its BlackBerry Messenger client across Android, iOS, and BlackBerry 10 with some useful new features.

The main new feature here is message retraction. You can now retract messages after sending them, or even edit them. This can be useful if you sent something by mistake and don't wish the other person to see it. This works in one on one chats as well as group chats.

BBM also supports timed messages now, where the messages disappear after a certain time once the recipient has seen them. Previously both features were only available via a paid add-on.

Other additions made free include ability to mute group chats, scrolling through pictures sent over chats and groups, ability to save images captured within the app, larger videos on iOS, redesigned UI on iOS, check multiple messages to delete, forward, or retract, forwarding messages from one chat to another, and Android 6.0 support.