The Federal Government has reiterated that a switch over from diesel/petrol-driven vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles would reduce the cost of transportation in the country.
The Minister of Transportation, Said Alkali, said this during a working visit to an International Liquified Natural Gas Energy Conversion, Transportation and Safety Company in Abuja on Tuesday.
According to the Minister, CNG-powered vehicles would change the Nigerian economy since transportation was the gateway to the nation’s economy.
He said that 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. It is the desire of President Bola Tinubu to provide this CNG outlets in the entire country,” he said.
The minister said that with CNG, 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 per cent.
“It is a massive effort, and it is for projects and programmes like this that President Bola Tinubu created a specialised 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 it was necessary for the President and the government to remove subsidy 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 on the need to do everything possible to support the government to bring down inflation rate in the country.
