The federal government has set measures in place to provide an alternative to Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) commonly known as petrol by promoting the use of compressed natural gas, CNG as an alternative to one million vehicles on Nigerian roads by 2027.
The programme director of the Presidential CNG Initiative (P-CNGI), Micheal Oluwagbemi, disclosed this during the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding MOU with other investors in Abuja, stating that the initiative is to provide over 50,000 jobs and lower transportation costs for Nigerian citizens.
This meeting according to the program Director is to formalize partnership with the Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology, (NITT), and FEMADEC Group, amongst others as this is aimed at catalyzing sustainable transportation in Nigeria.
Oluwagbemi said: “The government intends to establish 1000 conversion workshops across the country, adding that the initiative will help provide over 50, 000 jobs and cushion the effect of subsidy removal, there are ongoing plans to launch 55,000 CNG conversion kits for existing PMS-dependent vehicles within the timeframe specified by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“Our goal in the Presidential CNG Initiative, as stated by the President in his October 1st speech is to make 55,000 conversion kits immediately available to the Nigerian public so that we can begin to jumpstart the CNG revolution. The palliative program as described by the President in his July 31st speech is here until March 31 of 2024. So, technically speaking, we are expected to roll out 55, 000 within that time frame.
“We are quite a bit constrained when it comes to the number of workshops and there’s a reason why we are here today. We only have seven functional workshops in the country. In our estimate, we need about 1000 to be able to achieve our goal.
“Today, we are rolling out our initial partnership because there will be more partners, and there will be more investors in the sub-sector with four, one of them being the National Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology, to roll out an additional seven workshops in the next 14 days.”
Speaking, the Special Assistant on Special Duties and Domestic Affairs to the President, Toyin Subaru, said, It is all about substituting import. We spend over 5 billion dollars on petrol to import it and that is what is causing all these subsidy problems that we have. We have a goal of one million vehicles by the year 2027 and that allows Nigeria to save about 20 billion dollars in ten years and also allows us to manage transport inflation.
