In light of the recent increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit (Petrol), the Nigerian government has stated that it is making great efforts to lower the cost of transportation by forty percent through the growth and implementation of the Compressed Natural Gas Initiative.

This was revealed by Michael Oluwagbemi, the Program Director of the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative, during a Memorandum of Understanding signing on Friday in Abuja with representatives of the National Union of Road Transport Workers from the Kogi State train station units of Itakpe, Adavi, and Ajaokuta.

As more states adopt the program, he claims that compressed natural gas (CNG), the ideal substitute for gasoline, will drive down transportation costs.

He emphasized that the N12,000 transit fare from Abuja to Ajaokuta would be cut to N7,000 per person with the use of CNG.

“We are doing a lot of effort to lower the cost of transportation, particularly in these bad times. Compressed natural gas is a fantastic solution that the President has presented to the gasoline issue.

“In particular, the N5,000 journey from Itakpe Station to Warri demonstrates the advantages of our infrastructure investments over the previous five years.”

This amounts to a substantial percentage savings. The President’s participation will be extremely beneficial to passengers commuting from Abuja to Ajaokuta Station, he continued.

He made this observation while mentioning that NIPCO and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited had built ten CNG conversion stations in Abuja.

By the end of 2024, he claims, 17 more conversion stations will be installed around the nation.

We have five new stations in Delta and Abuja that we are establishing in partnership with Matrix Energy. Six stations in Abuja have been constructed by NNPC, and by October, six more are anticipated in Lagos, according to Oluwagbemi.

The news comes as Nigerians lament the country’s gasoline prices, which ranged from N950 to N1,100.

In the meantime, CNG was introduced by President Bola Ahmed Tinuad in August of last year to mitigate the effects of the increase in gas prices.

May 2024 saw the commissioning of 20 CNG buses by Tinubu.

However, according to August data from the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigerians have not yet fully benefited from the CNG effort because transportation costs have remained high.