The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles (Pi-CNG/EV), Mr. Ismael Ahmed, says that the availability of CNG is critical to making clean mobility affordable to Nigerians.
Ahmed told members of the CNG/EV Users Forum, who paid a courtesy visit to his office in Abuja that the development of CNG infrastructure was a complex process involving several stages, from gas production and processing to transportation, compression and distribution.
According to him, the Nigerian government is building a new industry from the ground up, rather than merely implementing an intervention in one segment of the value chain.
He said that transportation accounted for a significant portion of household expenditure, with Nigerians spending between 15 per cent and 25 per cent of their income on transportation, depending on their location and mode of transport.
Ahmed said that reducing transportation costs had therefore become important, particularly amid the impact of rising global oil prices on the domestic economy.
According to him, the administration of President Bola Tinubu has given the CNG the necessary political backing to become a national conversation, building on earlier efforts to promote the alternative fuel.
“CNG has been in existence for more than two decades around the world and probably in Nigeria for over 10 years, but it was largely private sector-led and limited in scope.
“It was this administration that gave it the necessary political backing and put its weight behind CNG as a national project.
“Nigeria has the resources and technology required to develop the CNG industry but the major challenge is to simultaneously create demand and ensure adequate supply,” Ahmed said.
He said that the misconceptions about CNG, including fears that its cylinders were similar to LPG cylinders and could easily explode, remained a major challenge to adoption.
The Pi-CNG boss said that changing people’s perception and energy habits would take time and require sustained public awareness.
He noted that investors also needed to be encouraged to commit funds to CNG infrastructure to ensure that consumers could access the product after converting their vehicles.
According to him, government alone cannot finance the entire CNG value chain because the industry requires huge investments and competes with other national priorities for limited public resources.
“Government catalyses. It catalyses on both ends — the demand side and the supply side,” he said.
Ahmed said the cost of gas production, pipelines, compression stations, transportation, daughter stations, land acquisition, licensing and establishment of filling stations all formed part of the investment required to deliver CNG to consumers.
He stressed that affordability cannot be separated from availability, noting that a cheaper product that is difficult to access will ultimately lose its economic advantage.
“Anything that is not available is not affordable. For it to be affordable, it has to be available.
“The ultimate beneficiary of the clean-mobility initiative should be the ordinary Nigerian, particularly commuters and passengers who depend on commercial and ride-hailing vehicles.
“The success of the initiative should therefore be measured by its impact on people’s daily lives rather than only by conventional economic indicators.
“Your GDP going up or down means nothing to me if the person in the village, town or suburb has not told me that he has seen some movement in his life.
“That is my economic index,” he said.
GIK/APA