Sa’idu Alkali, the Minister of Transportation, said that the federal government has begun the conversion of railway locomotive engines from diesel to Compressed Natural Gas.

The minister revealed this during an inspection of the retrofitting exercise at Idu train station in Abuja recently.

Alkali, while speaking on the sidelines shortly after the inspection, explained that the process was currently at an advanced stage as the engine is designed in such a way that the diesel is used to power the engine after which it is switched to gas.

The minister also noted that the conversion of the engines would use both diesel and CNG.

He explained that when completed, the engine would run on 70 percent gas and 30 percent on diesel.

He said, “We started in the last one month. Nigeria is the first African country to convert diesel engines to gas. The engine will work 30 per cent on diesel and 70 per cent on gas. At the time you want to start the locomotive, you use diesel, but after starting it, you switch to gas, and then it will keep on moving.

“We have interacted with the engineers and the process is at an advanced stage and we are going to test-run the engine and then determine when we will start rolling out the CNG locomotives.”

Speaking on the benefits, he noted, “We will bring down the cost of maintenance to about 60 to 70 percent. We will control emissions because once the locomotive is moved to gas, we are not going to have any carbon emissions.”

According to the minister, the process will start with the Abuja-Kaduna rail corridor since the conversion workshop is located in Abuja, promising that the expansion will spread to other corridors in the country.

“We want to start with Kaduna, Abuja, because the workshop is in Abuja here once we finish the retrofitting, we will then continue with all the remaining corridors.”