The presidency on Sunday assured Nigerians that the planned rollout of Compressed Natural Gas buses will reduce CNG price to N230 per kg.
Special Assistant to the President on Special Duties and Domestic Affairs, Toyin Subaru, gave the assurance at a stakeholders’ meeting held at the Bank of Industry headquarters, in Abuja.
This is coming amidst plans by the government to deploy 11,500 gas-powered buses across the country from next week, as part of measures to ease current transportation challenges.
Subaru said the initiative would help Nigerians save two-thirds on transportation costs and promote the use of CNG as an alternative to petrol.
The meeting was to formalise a partnership with the Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology, FEMADEC group, among others to facilitate sustainable transportation in Nigeria.
He 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.”
He added that the Federal Government plans to have one million CNG vehicles on Nigerian roads by 2027.
On his part, the Programme Director, the Presidential CNG Initiative, Micheal 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.
Oluwagbemi said, “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.
He added that with an ongoing partnership with relevant stakeholders, 55,000 CNG conversion kits for existing PMS-dependent vehicles will be launched within the time frame specified by the President.
