15th May, 2024
Stakeholders in Southwest Nigeria on Wednesday drummed support for the Presidential CNG initiative (P-CNGi) championed by President Bola Tinubu to provide cheap transportation for Nigerians.
The P-CNGi is a component of the palliative intervention of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration directed at providing succour to the masses occasioned by the transitive hardships of the fuel subsidy removal policy of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
The event was organised by the P-CNGi Steering Committee. The event was held in Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos, with stakeholders in the transportation sector, investors, federal government team and other representatives present.
Speaking at the event, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Nkiruka Onyejeocha applauded the P-CNGi, saying it would create more job opportunities and eradicate environmental emissions.
According to her, the initiative would improve Nigerian economy.
“In terms of transportation, it is a game changer, some other oil producing countries like Iran, India and others have keyed into this, a country like Iran uses a lot of CNG buses, we are coming to it too late, but it is better late than never.
“That is what the president has done, I think in his own creative mind, he felt that we should drop this ideal of fossils and go into renewable energy. In many ways it will impact on Nigerians, it will reduce cost of transportation and the cost of fueling your vehicle whether you are using trailer, trucks or tricycles, it will largely reduce it,” he said.
Onanuga explained that an experiment had been done, at the last Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja two weeks ago, saying “that two vehicles were deployed from Abuja to Ibadan, and they got to Ibadan, as they wanted to refill, they discovered that the petrol-driven vehicle spent N55,000 while the P-CNGi vehicle spent twenty something thousand naira, the saving is 60 percent.
“What the president is trying to do is to revolutionise it to make every Nigerian to adopt CNG as a transport system. The CNG will cut the cost of transportation and will reduce inflation, our inflation has increased largely due to transportation.”
Program Director/Chief Executive, PI-CNG, Michael Oluwagbemi, said the president’s initiative is a laudable one, saying that “Mr. President is not a novice in oil and gas, he understands how we can use gas to transform the economy and he has been committed to leveraging on the gas sector to create jobs.”
