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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
African Democratic Congress (ADC) 2027 Presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has said the Federal Government’s figure on the conversion of vehicles to use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), was an admission of failure.
Atiku, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, dismissed President Bola Tinubu’s latest promise to work with governors to reduce public transport fares as a desperate and belated response to a cost-of-living crisis created by his own government.
President Bola Tinubu, had in a statement on Thursday, directed the rollout of additional 500 CNG refuelling stations across the country. He added that over 120,000 vehicles have been converted nationwide through the Presidential CNG Initiative, “with more than 100,000 additional conversion kits in the works.”
The CNG initiative was introduced in 2023, in the aftermath of the end of the fuel subsidy regime by the President Tinubu’s administration on May 29, 2023.
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Nonetheless, the former vice president stated that it is obvious that the government has unwittingly published its own scorecard of failure. Atiku said the government’s celebration of 120,000 conversions in a country with millions of vehicles is the mathematical equivalent of celebrating a bucket of water while the house is still burning.
He noted that President Tinubu’s declaration that “cheaper fuel should result in cheaper fares” is equally a confession that the administration’s energy policy has been fundamentally disconnected from the daily survival of Nigerians.
According to him: “If Tinubu’s grand strategy for cushioning the consequences of his reckless and poorly thought-out subsidy removal is CNG conversion, then the admission that only about 120,000 vehicles have been converted in more than three years is not an achievement. It is an advertisement of policy failure.
“Against widely cited estimates of roughly 14 million vehicles on Nigerian roads, 120,000 conversions amount to less than one per cent. That is the government’s own number. That is Tinubu marking his own examination script.”
