Federal Govt Approves $1.2bn Sokoto Highway CNG Plan & Secures $190m Agric Facility

The Federal Executive Council FEC on Monday approved several short term and long term measures to cushion the effect of current economic challenges, especially with regards to public transportation.

Taiwo Oyedele, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the economy disclosed this on Monday, while briefing State House Journalists at the FEC meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu.

Speaking on plans to ease transportation, Oyedele said the government is trying to reduce public transportation costs, through various means.

He disclosed that apart from the budgetary provisions for the implementation of the Compressed Natural Gas CNG initiatives, the Council also approved another N215b on Monday to boost the CNG project

He also recalled that his ministry held a couple of meetings, with the filing station operators and the regulators, as part of measures to reduce prices following drop in the price of crude oil.

He however blamed the slow implementation of the reverse price on “old stocks” in the tank of marketers

“We expect that like the price of crude oil, you the operators will make the adjustment very quickly, but their excuse is that they need to be able to replace, so we call it the replacement cost.

“If you were selling at N1000 per liter, and prices go up and you don’t adjust immediately, if you sell at the old lower price, you can’t sustain your level of activities, that tends to make sense, but then when prices come down, the prices don’t go down as fast, so the excuse is always we have unsold inventory, so this is something we need to always balance.

“Of course, while we do not want our operators and businesses to go out of business. We also do not want them to exploit the Nigerian people. So, we trying to strike that balance, but it requires some work on the part of the regulators

He however cited efforts by the Federal Competition and Consumers Protection Commission FCCPC, to check consumer exploitation.

“We also have the Nigeria midstream downstream regulatory authority that have the mandates under the Petroleum Industry Act to ensure that prices, while being market reflective, do not take advantage of the Nigerian people.

“The long and short of what I’m saying is there’s already an ongoing process to address this issue.”

He also noted that the federal government has invested huge amount on CNG conversion kits as part of plans to ease public transport system

He however berated users of the government
subsidised CNG vehicles for charging the same fairs as those using fuel

“What we found is that the person that is using CNG is charging the same amount as the person that is using petrol, now that’s not government anymore, it’s just us taking advantage of the situation.

“So, if we all play our part and we’re very honest and think about the interest of our country, I think we’ll make progress faster.

Two Pollution control boats for the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy. N59.52b at the Port Harcourt

Six Pilot boats to convey pilots to boats for navigation and navigating through channels and liaison base at N80.2b for the six

Two fire fighting boats at the cost of N34.59b for fire patrol, help tankers to discharge their products for the NPA

Channeling and clearing blockages a collaboration between the NPA and others N112.8b, the main task is to minimise carbon hydraulic and ensure safety and address certain environmental issues

“So we had about 14 memos, and the first, one has to do with how to bring the cost of transportation down. As many of you will recall, President Tinubu had introduced initiatives on CNG buses, electric vehicles, CNG fuel tricycles, and conversion kits.

“Some of these investments had already been made based on anticipatory approval by the President, given the urgency of those interventions and council today approved. So, what that means is the remaining investment that needs to be made can now go ahead. The total amount is 200 buses at the cost of about N215b

“The second category is about financing agricultural and rural technical vocational training, special agro-industrial processing zones, as well as a Greek valuation for growth projects, altogether we have different financing arrangements coming to a total of 900 million US dollars.

“The next heading is to do with Power and council approved the credits facility from the Islamic Development Bank of about 160 million US dollars facility for Niger State Solar Energy Development Project. The Islamic Development Bank will provide $150 million and and the government of Niger States will provide the counterpart funding of 10 million US dollars.

“The fourth category is to do with infrastructure, as you would agree, it’s important for us to continue to invest in infrastructure and Council approved 1.2 billion US dollars for the Sokoto Badagri Superhighway, and this is the section two of the project over in Kebbi State,

“The last is essentially about providing affordable financing for small businesses, one of it is 200 million euros, and the other one is 500 million US dollars, and this financing will be provided through the Development Bank of Nigeria to provide access to affordable credit, like I said, to these small businesses”