By Kikelomo Adeleye, 14th June,2024
The Federal Government has rolled out plans to subsidise Compressed Natural Gas vehicle conversion kits by 50% for road transport union members across the country.
The Programme Director and Chief Executive of the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative, Michael Oluwagbemi, disclosed this at the Northern stakeholders engagement held in Kaduna.
According to Oluwagbemi, the CNG initiative was created to cushion the effects of fuel subsidy removal on Nigerians and open new investment windows for domestic and global investors in the gas sector.
He noted that the subsidised conversion programme was part of President Bola Tinubu’s goal of having one million vehicles converted to CNG by 2027.
He added that the Federal Government had procured over 20,000 conversion kits that would be immediately deployed for the conversion incentive programme.
He said t the P-CNGI had identified eight conversion centers in four locations which include Kwara, Lagos, Abuja and Rivers that would pilot the programme.
Oluwagbemi said, “We are launching what we called the Conversion Incentive Programme with members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers of Nigeria, Road Transport Employees Association of Nigeria and National Association of Road Transport Owners being our immediate focus. This is because they are the operators in the road transport sector providing 90 per cent of the transportation in the country to members of the public.
We will be making the conversion kits available to them at 50% discount and we are also ensuring that the installation cost is free. We are already negotiating already with our partners who will initiate that project in the next week.
“We have already identified eight conversion centers in four states, namely Kwara, Lagos FCT and Rivers that will pilot the programme. Immediately after that, we will start expanding to other conversion vent that we have identified and they are 120 of them across the country.”
The Kaduna State Governor, Senator Uba Sani, in his keynote address on the occasion, lauded the Federal Government’s initiative in setting a phase in switching from petrol powered vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas powered vehicles particularly the buses category
The governor, who was represented by the state Commissioner for Works, Ibrahim Hamza, said transportation remained the backbone of the nation’s economy.
“Transportation is one of the major promoters of our socio-economic activities which deals with the movement of persons, goods and freight from one point to another,” he said.
