The Federal Government says a switch over from petrol-driven vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, would cut down the cost of transportation in the country.
The Minister of Transportation, Said Alkali, stated this at a working visit to an International Liquified Natural Gas Energy Conversion, Transportation and Safety Company on Tuesday in Abuja.
Alkali said that CNG-powered vehicles would change the Nigerian economy since transportation was the gateway to the nation’s economy.
According to him, with the switch over to CNG, a lot of resources would be saved and the challenges with public transportation would be solved.
“By the time this CNG is put in place all over the country, we are going to have a drastic reduction in the cost of transportation.
“Already, we have a lot of CNG outlets in Abuja. President Bola Tinubu desires to provide these CNG outlets in the entire country,” he said.
The minister said that with CNG, the government was redoubling efforts at providing safer and cheaper energy in the transportation sector, which should bring down the cost of goods and services.
Also speaking, former Special Adviser to the President on Senate Matters, Sen. Ita Enang, said that CNG-driven vehicles would reduce the cost of transportation by 90 percent.
“It is a massive effort, and it is for projects and programs like this that President Bola Tinubu created a specialized ministry of transportation and ministry of gas.
“This is so that each of them will contribute in different ways to easing the cost of living and transportation for Nigerians.
“This is a justification that the President and the government needed to remove subsidies on petroleum products because there is this alternative.
“What Nigerians need to do to avoid the pain on the economy; the pain experienced by the removal of subsidy on petroleum products, is to switch over to gas,” he said.
Chief Operating Officer of the company, Mr Samuel Uko, assured stakeholders of the company’s efforts toward reducing the cost of transportation in the country.
Uko said that the gas initiative was President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda project.
He tasked all stakeholders with the need to do everything possible to support the government to bring down the inflation rate in the country.
