President Bola Tinubu has revealed that the country spends N2tn monthly to import petrol and diesel.
Tinubu said this during his recent nationwide broadcast to Nigerians.
According to the President, despite Nigeria’s abundant oil and gas resources, his administration met a country that was dependent only on oil, neglecting its gas resources while subsidising the cost of fuel.
He removed fuel subsidies on his first day in office, and this led to an increase in the pump price of petrol from about N200 per litre in May 2023 to about N700 at the moment.
As a result, the President noted that his administration had invested in Compressed Natural Gas to change the narrative.
“Fellow Nigerians, we are a country blessed with both oil and gas resources, but we met a country that had been dependent solely on oil-based petrol, neglecting its gas resources to power the economy. We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for and subsidise its use.
“To address this, we immediately launched our Compressed Natural Gas Initiative, to power our transportation economy and bring costs down. This will save over N2tn a month, be used to import PMS and AGO and free up our resources for more investment in healthcare and education,” Tinubu stated.
He reiterated that his administration would be distributing one million kits of extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicle owners transporting people and goods and who currently consume 80 per cent of the imported petrol and diesel.
“We have started the distribution of conversion kits and the setting up of conversion centres across the country in conjunction with the private sector. We believe that this CNG initiative will reduce transportation costs by approximately 60 per cent and help to curb inflation,” Tinubu said.
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