By Ogaga Ariemu
The Nigerian government said the era of buying Premium Motor Spirit, known as fuel between N750 to N1000 per liter, is over as it will commission 30,000 Compressed Natural Gas powered vehicles in the next 90 days.
The Project Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative, Michael Oluwagbemi, disclosed this during the Park to Park CNG Mobilisation program held at the Ojota Park in Lagos on Saturday.
He said the initiative is expected to gulp N36 billion for 30,000 CNG conversion kits for distribution free of charge nationwide within the period.
The kits and the conversion costs were valued at the rate of N1.2m per vehicle, making a total of N36bn within the next three months.
He stressed that the move was to ensure the adoption of CNG as an alternative fuel for transportation.
“Today, we are here with conversion kits. We have bought over 30,000 of these kits, mainly for distribution in the next 90 days.
“The President has told us that this is not just to end with 30,000 kits, the target is one million kits. We want to make sure all of you can benefit from this government initiative,” he stated.
“The era of buying N750, N800, or N1,000/liter fuel is over. We are not doing that again. We will start using the gas under our feet so that we can buy it at N230/kg,” he stated.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu had ordered all Ministries, Departments and Agencies to procure CNG-powered vehicles as palliative to ease the impact of fuel subsidy removal.
This is a good move. The root cause of the current inflation and economic hardship we are experiencing is due to the subsidy removal on petrol. With this initiative, things will return to normal as soon as the vehicles are every where. Producers and manufacturers should also switch to CNG.