Federal government has been urged to provide necessary technical and financial assistance to convert 20 percent of petrol stations across the country to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) within the next six months.
The chairman of Kwara Must Change, Mr Abdulrazaq Hamzat, made the appeal on the sidelines of the commissioning of a CNG station in Ilorin, Kwara State.
Hamzat, a clean energy advocate, said that the federal government’s CNG adoption programme has been too slow to become an alternative energy source for petrol users in the short term.
Hamzat noted that “the Federal Ministry of Petroleum launched a CNG adoption programme in August 2023, but the initiative is not only too slow in implementation but also too small to accommodate the volume of demand in the country.”
Hazmat, who noted that the Ministry of Petroleum, through the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), had partnered with NIPCO Gas Limited to establish CNG stations in the country, added that “although NIPCO is present in 22 states, it currently operates just 15 auto CNG stations, with about 19 others coming up, 4 in Lagos.”
He explained that NNPC’s partnership with NIPCO will develop about 56 CNG stations across Nigeria, 35 of which will be in Lagos State alone. He added that in the same Lagos, one other CNG station was developed with the capacity to fill 600 trucks and buses per day.
Hamzat maintained that these CNG stations are too insufficient, even as pilots, to accommodate the volume of demand that would come, even in the first few weeks of operations.
“The survey conducted by our research team shows that the public has huge expectations beyond the federal government’s plans, and this will create some setbacks in the subsequent advocacy for CNG adoption.
“Our research shows that one in every five Nigerians are willing to try CNG when it is available,” he said.
Hamzat, therefore, proposed that the federal government mandate all petrol stations to convert 20 percent of their facilities to CNG.