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Ismael Ahmed, Chairman of the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles (PI-CNG&EV), has urged the Federal Government to mandate that commercial vehicle operators switch from petrol and diesel to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
Ahmed made the proposal during an interview on Arise News TV while discussing the government’s alternative-fuel programme and efforts to expand CNG adoption across the country.
He said the focus of the initiative had shifted from proving that CNG technology works to achieving nationwide adoption, adding that commercial vehicles should be at the centre of the transition.
“We need to move to a point where we are going to mandate as a government that all commercial vehicles must run away from fuel, from PMS and diesel,” he said.
According to him, Nigeria has about 12 million vehicles, with commercial vehicles accounting for an estimated 55 to 60 per cent of the total fleet.
He said mandating the transition among commercial vehicles would therefore provide a major boost to the government’s efforts to reduce dependence on petrol and diesel and lower transportation costs.
Ahmed said the CNG programme had already resulted in reduced fares on some routes, although the benefits had not yet reached commuters across the country on the scale desired.
He listed Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, Ebonyi and Maiduguri among locations where passengers were already benefiting from fare reductions linked to the deployment of CNG and electric vehicles.
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The PI-CNG&EV chairman also pointed to Nigeria’s estimated 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, saying the country had the technology required to compress the resource for use in transportation.
He said expanding CNG adoption would enable Nigeria to utilise its abundant gas resources while providing an alternative to petrol and diesel for road transportation.
The government is also expanding infrastructure to support the transition.
The Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund (MDGIF) is financing more than 100 gas projects, including 15 CNG mother stations and 86 daughter stations.
The government also plans to add another 500 CNG refuelling stations to the 500 already ordered, bringing the planned nationwide network to 1,000 stations.
Ahmed said the government was targeting the conversion of one million commercial petrol vehicles to CNG by 2027.
About 120,000 vehicles had been converted as of the latest data published by the PI-CNG&EV, while the initiative has attracted more than $2.5 billion in investment.
He said the expansion of CNG infrastructure and vehicle conversions remained critical to ensuring that the benefits of cheaper alternative fuel reached more Nigerians and supported a reduction in transportation costs nationwide.
