The Federal Government has assured Nigerians that the planned introduction of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses will reduce the price of CNG to N230 per kg.
This announcement was made by the Special Assistant to the President on Special Duties and Domestic Affairs, Toyin Subaru, during a stakeholders’ meeting held at the Bank of Industry headquarters on Sunday in Abuja.
This is coming against the backdrop of the Federal Government’s initiative to deploy 11,500 CNG-powered buses nationwide from next week, to ease the transportation challenges brought about by subsidy removal.
The presidential aide stated that the introduction of CNG-powered mass transit buses would help Nigerians save two-thirds of transportation. In addition, he noted that the initiative would also promote the use of CNG as an alternative to petrol.
What Subaru said:
- “Now, with this CNG plan, we don’t even have to import what we need to operate our vehicles. It is called CNG and we have the gas here in Nigeria. So, the idea is just to take the gas to distribute it across Nigeria via different truck stations.
- “Most gas is not CNG enabled yet and what we are doing is to help them convert their cars so you can use petrol and CNG at the same time.
- “We are going to develop an app that will enable you locate where a CNG station is located. We should be able to buy gas for our cars at N230 per KG as against the cost of petrol which is N680 per litre. This should help every Nigerian save about two-thirds of their transport cost.”
The presidential aide further stated that the Federal Government intends to have one million CNG-powered vehicles on the roads by 2027.
More Insights
Michael Oluwagbemi, the Programme Director of the Presidential CNG Initiative, in his remarks, stated that the Federal Government plans on establishing 1,000 conversion workshops nationwide, adding that over 50,000 jobs will be created as a result of the initiative.
- In his words, “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 programme as described by the president will last until March 31, 2024. So, technically speaking, we are expected to roll out 55,000 within that time frame. “Given of course naturally, we are quite a bit constrained when it comes to the number of workshops and there’s a reason why we’re 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.”
