As part of moves to convert 1 million vehicles from petrol to compressed natural gas (CNG) by 2027, the federal government has rolled out plans to subsidise CNG vehicle conversion kits by 50 per cent for road transport union members.
The programme director and chief executive officer of the Presidential Initiative on CNG, Micheal Oluwagbemi, an engineer, disclosed this in Kaduna on Tuesday while speaking at the Northern Stakeholders Engagement organised by the Initiative.
Oluwagbemi said the federal government had procured over 20,000 conversion kits that would be immediately deployed for the conversion incentive programme.
He said, “We are launching what we call Conversion Incentive Programme with members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), RTEAN and NARTO, being our immediate focus. This is because they are the operators in the road transport sector, providing 90 per cent of transportation in the country to members of the public.
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“We will be making the conversion kits available to them at 50 per cent discount. We are also ensuring that the installation cost is free. We are already negotiating with our partners, who will initiate the project in the next week.
“We have already identified eight conversion centres in four states, namely, Kwara, Lagos, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Rivers, which will pilot the programme. Immediately after that, we will start expanding to other conversion vents we have identified. And there are 120 of them across the country,” Oluwagbemi said.
The subsidised conversion programme is part of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s goal of having 1million vehicles converted to CNG by 2027.
In his keynote address, the Kaduna State governor, Senator Uba Sani, who was represented by the Commissioner for Works, Ibrahim Hamza, an architect, commended federal government’s initiative, setting a phase in switching from petrol-powered vehicles to compressed natural gas powered, particularly the bus category.
He said, “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. This consists of air, land and sea, among other modes. The service is known to be carried out for both private and commercial purposes.
“In our country, the land mode is the major means of transportation, which heavily relies on the use of fossil fuel for its operation.”
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