…says initiative to provide over 50, 000 jobs, lower transportation cost
To promote Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as an alternative to Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly known as petrol, the Federal Government of Nigeria has unveiled plans to have one million CNG vehicles on Nigerian roads by 2027.
The program director, Presidential CNG Initiative, Engr. Micheal Oluwagbemi disclosed this at a stakeholders’ meeting held at MOFI in Bank of Industry, at the weekend, in Abuja.
The meeting was to formalize a partnership with the Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology, NITT, and FEMADEC Group, among others, to catalyze sustainable transportation in Nigeria.
Oluwagbemi said the government intends to establish 1,000 conversion workshops across the country, adding that the initiative will help provide over 50, 000 jobs and cushion the effect of subsidy removal.
He explained that 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.
He said: “Our goal in the presidential CNG initiative, as stated by the President in his October 1 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 is on July 31 speech is here until March 31 of 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 1,000 to achieve our goal.
“Today, we’re rolling out our initial partnership because there’ll be more partners, and there’ll be more investors in the sub-sector with four, one of them being a national Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology to roll out additional seven workshops in the next 14 days.
“We believe they can do more but what we will have to do is to double what they have in 14 days and from there we can start doubling after 14 days, in that way we can be able to get closer to our goal of having workshops everywhere there is CNG in Nigeria so that we can convert those 55, 000 vehicles.
“We have a goal, 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.
“You will have five people working there in two days. So, if we have 1000 workshops, we are talking about 5,000 jobs for technicians, including the cost of the labor and manpower that will go into the increased supply of CNG, processing stations, model stations, and refueling stations that will not run on this ecosystem.
“So, the number of jobs that will be rolling out under this program, even under the pilot phase in six months, easily with support of about 50,000 jobs, 50,000 jobs that never existed before will be supported by this program.”
On his part, the Special Assistant on Special Duties and Domestic Affairs to Mr 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.
“Now, with this, 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 are not CNG enabled 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 to know where a CNG station is located. We should be able to buy gas for our cars at N230 when today petrol is N680. So, it will help save about two-thirds of your money.”
