Agbakoba: Fuel scarcity shows PIA is inefficient
The Federal Government, yesterday, in Abuja commenced the conversion of vehicles to run on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), targeting to transit one million automobiles to run on gas in the next three years.
Expecting to take off with 20,000 kits, which was purchased through palliative, the government said commercial transporters, National Union of Road Transport Workers and Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) would be given the kits at no cost including installation, while e-hailing vehicles from Bolt, Lag-Ride and other would be given 50 per cent discount.
About five companies; Portland Gas, Nipco, ABG oil and Gas, Fix It 45 and Nigerian Institute of Transportation (NIIT) would immediately kickstart the conversation as over 120 other vendors are expected to be enrolled across the country.
Nigeria is seeking a way to reduce dependence on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), where government is staking trillions of naira in subsidies. Speaking in Abuja, the Project Director, Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative (P-CNGi), Micheal Oluwagbemi, said the move would reduce the cost of fuel for motorists by about 50 per cent and half the cost of transportation in the country.
He noted that instead of using diesel and PMS, Nigeria would begin using its abundant gas resources, which is being flared, exported with only little being utilised to drive the nation’s economy.
This is as a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Olisa Agbakoba, restated on Thursday his call for the repeal of the less than three-year-old Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), citing the fuel queues in many parts of the country as a mark of inefficiency of the law.
“I am interested in efficiency. I am interested in how the oil we bring out of our ground. Since the year 2000, $33 trillion of oil (proceeds) has entered our coffers. Show me the result – broken schools, broken roads, no hospitals, poverty in the land, so something is wrong, and if something is wrong, you must look at it. If the PIA is such a fantastic bill, why are we having the problem of fuel scarcity?” Agbakoba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said on Arise Television’s Morning Show.
Long queues of petrol buyers have surfaced in the last one week in different parts of the country, amid a shortage in the supply of the product to marketers. President Bola Tinubu announced the withdrawal of the petrol subsidy in his inauguration speech in May last year, hoping that deregulating the supply of the product under the PIA regime would remove bottlenecks in the supply chain and boost its profitability.
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