Mr Innocent Chukwuma, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing, has assured Nigerians that the Compressed Natural Gas-powered buses initiative of the Federal Government will bring down the cost of transportation in the country.
He also asked Nigerians to exercise patience with the Bola Tinubu administration, asking them to “give him time.”
“I’ve discussed with him (President Tinubu), and soon the masses will have plenty of CNG buses on the road,” Mr Chukwuma told journalists after emerging from closed-door talks with President Bola Tinubu at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Thursday.
The automobile entrepreneur described the Presidential CNG Initiative as “the way forward” for the country.
He explained, “The government’s initiative on CNG is the best idea for transportation in this country because CNG offers many benefits for Nigeria.
“That benefit is what I recognised before I started the factory to produce vehicles that run on CNG. I began producing CNG kits before the announcement.
“So today, everyone who tries CNG will find that it is the way forward for this nation.”
Thursday’s meeting follows President Tinubu’s nationwide broadcast five days earlier, in which he promised to distribute “a million kits at extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicles that transport people and goods and who currently consume 80 per cent of the imported Premium Motor Spirit and Automotive Gas Oil.”
Tinubu argued that despite Nigeria’s abundance of oil and gas resources, the country had relied solely on oil-based petrol, neglecting its gas resources to power the economy. He stated that the CNG initiative would save the country N2 trillion monthly.
“We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for and subsidise its use.
“To address this, we have launched our Compressed Natural Gas Initiative to power our transportation economy and reduce costs.
“This will save over two trillion Naira a month, which is currently used to import PMS and AGO, and free up our resources for greater investment in healthcare and education,” said Tinubu.
