Mr. Innocent Chukwuma, founder and CEO of Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing, announced that commuters will soon be able to benefit from cheaper transportation through natural gas buses.
He also urged Nigerians to be patient 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,” Chukwuma told reporters after emerging from a closed-door talks with President Bola Tinubu at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja on Thursday.
The auto-entrepreneur described the president’s CNG initiative as “the way forward” for the country.
He said, “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 recognized 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 national address five days ago, in which he pledged “a million kits at extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicles that transport people and goods and who currently consume 80 percent of the imported Premium Motor Spirit and Automotive Gas Oil.”
Tinubu maintained that despite its abundant oil and gas reserves, Nigeria is relying solely on oil-based petrol and ignoring its gas reserves to boost the economy. He explained that the CNG initiative would save the country 2 trillion naira per month.
“We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for and subsidize 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,” Tinubu said.
