The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), has contracted Innoson Vehicle Motors (IVM) to produce Condensed Natural Gas (CNG) city buses to cushion the effects of fuel subsidy removal next year The chairman of Innoson Group, Chief Innocent Chukwuma, revealed this to journalists recently in Nnewi, Anambra state.
He said: “I am doing city buses for NNPC. The one that will use gas. 100 units. I am producing it from start to finish. It will be purely gas. But I made it in such a way that in case there is scarcity of gas, it will use diesel. So, it can change as an alternative, he added: “I can produce electric cars and make gas its alternative. I wanted to start producing electric cars, but Nigeria is not yet ready. Immediately Nigeria is ready, I will produce it. I have made the study and trained people on it. It’s a good development and we are ready for it.”
The Nigerian government had unveiled plans to sponsor the conversion of one million cars to run on gas. Gas is Nigeria’s transition fuel. The NNPC Ltd, Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, had announced in December 2020 that the Ministry of Petroleum will provide the structure for the free conversion services to enable automobiles to switch from premium motor spirit to gas. Speaking to Arise TV recently on the issue, Chukwuma said: “I am now producing some vehicles with CNG engines for NNPC. I am almost through with the production and I did the best quality of the CNG cars and it was built from my factory. CNG will help everybody because the consumption of CNG is better than fuel. If people can convert to CNG, it will benefit the nation, the transport costs will dropdown. Nigeria has a lot of CNG wasting.”
IVM has a plant at Nnewi, South Eastern Nigeria that has a production capacity of 60,000 cars.
