The Program Director and Chief Executive, Presidential CNG Initiative (Pi-CNG), Michael Oluwagbemi has said that centres to convert vehicles to run on Compressed Natura Gas (CNG) will be extended to 20 states by October.
Oluwagbemi disclosed this during an interview monitored by NewsNGR.
Oluwagbemi said, “Conversion has started. Under our own program, we’ve activated a conversion site in seven states, and additional states will be added. The seven states are Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, FCT, Nassarawa, Niger, and Kaduna States.
“And those states are, of course, being increased every day. We expect that before the end of September, we should be in at least 15 states, and before the end of October, we should be in about 20.”
The Presidential CNG Initiative (Pi-CNG) was inaugurated by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to provide succour to the Nigerians occasioned by the transitive hardships of the fuel subsidy removal policy of the government.
The price of Premium Motor Spirit has jumped to nearly N700 per litre and in some states about N900 per litre, a development that has elevated Nigeria’s inflation and hardship.
The Program Director said, “So we are expanding our footprint every day. So far, we have over 50 conversion centres signed up under that initiative, which is the conversion incentive program. The president announced that they will allow a million conversion vehicles to be able to get converted for free or almost at a heavy discount.
“In Nigeria today, we have about 10,000 vehicles running on CNG, and it’s increasing every minute. It’s a drop in the ocean, but it’s a lot better than where we were this time last year.
“It takes time. We do not have sufficient conversion centers. We only had seven of them when we launched this program in November of last year.”
He explained that each conversion centre will be able to do two conversions every day.
According to Oluwagbemi, the government is also organizing training for technicians.
He said, “And we also have to proceed to make sure that we ensure those vehicles when they are properly done so you need to make sure you We are also building technical capacity, we are training technicians, we did the signing with the Ministry of Labor working with Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology (NITT) under the Ministry of Transport and we are doing MS training across the country for 500 technicians and we are going to do more.”