03 Dec FG Pegs Autogas Vehicle Conversion At N250,000
The Federal Government has walked back on the promise to convert vehicles to auto-gas for free.
Yesterday the government said automobile owners will pay up to N250, 000 for conversion targeted at enabling their vehicles run on gas.
Justice Derefaka, Technical Adviser on Gas Business and Policy Implementation to Minister of State for Petroleum, Chief Timipre Sylva, who said this explained that the conversion would be carried out at various centres nationwide.
He said: “The conversion of your vehicle is not something that will take three weeks or seven days; it will take you around seven to eight hours because they (technicians) need to do a diagnosis of your vehicle to see if it is fit for conversion. After that, they will test for road worthiness and then proceed.
“The owner of the car will decide to say I want to run on autogas or CNG or LNG and like the honourable minister had mentioned before, conversion has basic strands, you can partner with your bank and the bank will now agree with the conversion centre to convert your vehicle, not for free entirely.
“The installer will now put some form of mechanism that each time you buy the gas; a certain amount will be deducted to pay for the conversion kit. Some people will say it is too expensive but I do not think it is, because within a period of five to seven months, you’ve already paid off the cost.”
He added: “The cost varies, it depends on the cylinder of the vehicle but on the average, it is around N200, 000 to N250, 000 and this is for a four-cylinder vehicle but it becomes a little bit higher for a six-cylinder vehicle. If you take your vehicle to some of the centres like the one commissioned yesterday (Tuesday), technicians and original equipment manufacturers are there, so you can bring your vehicles for conversion to start running on gas.”
The federal government had expressed optimism that the N250 billion facility recently earmarked by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to fund the autogas programme, amongst other gas initiatives in its National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP), would help fast-track vehicle conversion and deployment of required infrastructure for the initiative.
Also at the launch of the autogas scheme on Tuesday, Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Mele Kyari, who spoke on the financing, had said: “You bring your car to a location and then we fit in the things you need to call the gas and also to receive the gas into your car.
“All the one million cars that we promised will be done through a structure that the Ministry of Petroleum Resources will put in place to ensure that any Nigerian who has to convert his car will get it done for free.”
However, Derefaka sang a different tune yesterday, saying owners of the vehicles will bear the cost of the conversion.
But he added that the federal government is working out a financing scheme to ease the burden of the conversion cost on vehicles’ owners.
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