Government To Convert 10 Million Premium Motor Spirit Vehicles To CNG

The federal government announced that it will be converting 10 million Premium Motor Spirit vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in the time span of three years.

Louis Ibah, who serves as the spokesperson of the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas) Ekperikpe Ekpo, disclosed Wednesday that this information was shared by the minister at the ADIPEC 2023 conference and exhibition in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

This initiative will be implemented in partnership with the private sector, as per the minister.

"Our ministry is working with the organized private sector to roll out over two million CNG conversion kits for free within the next nine months to push the utilization of CNG as the main fuel for vehicles nationwide," Minister Ekpo was quoted as saying by Punch.

"This initiative is aimed at converting 10 million vehicles from PMS to CNG in the next 36 months," noting that "this singular action is a testament to President Tinubu's resolve to promote gas commercialization in Nigeria for export and domestic utilization," he added.

This initiative will help to create over 100,000 jobs in Nigeria. The minister went on to list President Tinubu-led government's initiatives that will promote and support gas-based industrialization and decarbonization in the country.

These initiatives include a decade of gas (Upstream, Midstream, and Downstream), supplying cooking gas to every household, a gas flare commercialization program, gas to petrochemicals, and CNG for vehicles.

"These are all aimed at attracting investments of more than $20 billion into the country for NAG offshore and deep-water acreage development," he said.

The announcement came Nigeria's two biggest workers' unions - National Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) - signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for spending N315 billion in the next six months as allowance for federal workers.

In the MoU, the federal government also agreed to vote N100 billion for the provision of high-capacity CNG buses for mass transit in Nigeria. Provisions will be made initially for 55,000 CNG conversion kits to kick start an autogas conversion program while working on state-of-the-art CNG stations nationwide.

The agreement was signed to suspend the planned nationwide strike, which was announced by the organized labor union on Sept. 1. At that time, the union gave a 21-day ultimatum to the government to address the union demands amid the removal of subsidies that caused an increase in fuel prices, among other issues.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced fuel subsidy removal on May 29. However, last month he acknowledged the hardship Nigeria is going through, assuring that with "patience and determination," Nigeria will succeed.