Former President Olusegun Obasanjo while speaking on Sunday revealed that his administration while in office had the intention to develop the nation’s natural gas in order to power vehicles and to reduce the nation’s dependence on imported petrol
The former president disclosed that his administration at the time gave out licences to companies in order to achieve the goal.
Obasanjo, while playing host to the management of Nipco Plc who paid him a courtesy visit at his Presidential Hilltop residence in Abeokuta, Ogun State said: “When I gave the licence in my time, the idea was to use what we had and by now, we could have put half of all the vehicles on gas.”
Confirming the ex-President’s move during his regime, Dr. Muhammed Ibrahim, a former Special Assistant on Petroleum Resources to Obasanjo who was on the Nipco team said: “I was one of the team members when President Obasanjo was in office in 2006 that initiated the full concept of development of gas for vehicles and other applications in the country. It was during his regime that President Obasanjo awarded three licences to three companies to invest in the promotion and diffusion of Compressed Natural Gas for vehicular application in the country.
“But because of the capital-intensive and high-tech nature of the project, only one company today after 10 years has invested millions of dollars in the project such that the entire Benin City is encircled with a network of gas pipelines with about seven CNG gas stations providing the CNG to more than 4,000 vehicles.”