The Abia State Government has announced plans to inject buses and cars that use compressed natural gas(CNG) into the transport system very soon.
The Commissioner for Information and Culture, Prince Okey Kanu, said that government took the decision to fill the void that would be created following the restriction order placed on tricycle and motorcycle operations.
He said that commercial keke and okada operators would be encouraged to form cooperatives to have easy access to the CNG vehicles.
The implementation of this green agenda won’t be hard for Abia as a firm has already announced that its motor assembly plant that would produce CNG vehicles was almost ready.
Rosettes Motors with capacity to produce 40,000 units of automobiles (mostly CNG) per annum has set up its assembly plant at Obu-Aku City in Ukwa West Local Government Area of Abia State.
The Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Roxettes, Dr Kaycee Orji, said that all the equipment needed for the assembly plant to start production would arrive before the end of next month.
According to a press release from the governor’s office, Orji assured Governor Alex Otti during a meeting between the duo that the eco-friendly vehicles were just around the corner.
“The assembly plant will see us rolling out about 40,000 units of automobiles per annum and 70% of the production would be mainly innovative products like electric vehicles and CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) driven vehicles,” the Abia-born entrepreneur said.
“The world is migrating to sustainable energy and we don’t want to sit back and watch the world move and Nigeria and Abia State are not doing anything,” he added.
Orji disclosed that the choice of Abia for siting the assembly plant was due to the existence of “the most favourable environment to start because of the current leadership”.
He said that the company would start production within the year with assembly of electric vehicles while another production line is designated as CNG conversion plant.
“What it means is that we are going to have the capability to convert any vehicle to CNG. We are going to have the CNG kits installed there and then the CNG cylinders installed so that people can run on cheaper and cleaner energy,” further added.
The Roxettes CEO expressed his gratefulness to Governor Otti for encouraging him to bring the motor assembly plant to Abia and going ahead to provide land and within a month issued the firm with certificate of occupancy.
Dr. Orji also said that his company has produced CNG generators in China which would be marketed in the Nigerian market, “so that we don’t bother or stress the already crowded demands on the national grid”.
He said that the motor assembly plant would provide job opportunities to over 1,000 Abians by the time they kick start their operations, adding that Obu-Aku City is now called Eco-Drive Green Tech Metropolis.
According to him, the name change is fitting “because we have in mind to do a whole lot of things within that space”.
Otti assured the Roxettes boss that government would patronise the company and purchase its vehicles, saying that he was happy the vehicles would be assembled here in Abia with “an emblem that says this vehicle is manufactured in Nigeria”.
“We love that the vehicles are assembled here but we will be happier if we begin to manufacture them here. We understand how manufacturing happens,” he said, noting that different companies manufacture different parts of a vehicle.
The Abia Governor advised the Roxettes Ceo to start considering backward integration so that “we can reach a level where some of parts would be produced in Aba”.
Emmanuel Ugwu-Nwogo
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