Within the next six months, the federal government has been encouraged to supply the technical and financial support required to convert twenty percent of gas stations nationwide to compressed natural gas (CNG).
The plea was made by Mr. Abdulrazaq Hamzat, the chairman of Kwara Must Change, outside of the commissioning of a CNG station in Ilorin, Kwara State.
The federal government’s CNG adoption project, according to clean energy advocate Hamzat, has moved too slowly to replace petrol as a short-term energy source for drivers.
According to Hamzat, “the Federal Ministry of Petroleum launched a CNG adoption programme in August 2023, but the initiative is too small to accommodate the volume of demand in the country and is too slow in implementation.”
CNG stations, with four in Lagos State alone and perhaps nineteen more on the horizon. He continued by saying that another CNG station with the ability to fill 600 trucks and buses daily was built in the same Lagos.
According to Hamzat, even as pilot projects, these CNG stations are not big enough to handle the amount of demand that will arise, especially in the initial weeks of operation.