The Federal Government has announced the release of N570bn to the 36 states to expand livelihood support to their citizens.
President Bola Tinubu who announced this on Sunday, also revealed that Nigeria spends N2tn monthly to import Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, and Automotive Gas Oil, otherwise known as diesel.
Tinubu stated this during his nationwide broadcast to Nigerians, as he disclosed that N9.1tn was accumulated as total fiscal revenue to the Federal Government’s coffers during the first half of 2024, marking a significant increase from what was earned by the previous administration.
“Also, more than N570bn has been released to the 36 states to expand livelihood support to their citizens, while 600,000 nano-businesses have benefitted from our nano-grants. An additional 400,000 more nan0-businesses are expected to benefit,” the President stated.
He noted that despite Nigeria’s abundant oil and gas resources, his administration met a country that was dependent only on oil, neglecting its gas resources while subsidising the cost of fuel.
As a result, he said his administration invested in Compressed Natural Gas to change the narrative.
“Fellow Nigerians, we are a country blessed with both oil and gas resources, but we met a country that had been dependent solely on oil-based petrol, neglecting its gas resources to power the economy. We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for and subsidise its use.
“To address this, we immediately launched our Compressed Natural Gas Initiative to power our transportation economy and bring costs down. This will save over N2tn a month, being used to import PMS and AGO and free up our resources for more investment in healthcare and education,” Tinubu stated.
He said his administration would distribute one million kits of extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicles that transport people and goods, and who currently consume 80 per cent of the imported petrol and diesel.
“We have started the distribution of conversion kits and setting up of conversion centres across the country in conjunction with the private sector. We believe that this CNG initiative will reduce transportation costs by approximately 60 per cent and help to curb inflation,” Tinubu disclosed.
While licensed individuals have been importing diesel into Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited remains the sole importer of petrol into the country.
Despite being the largest oil producer in Africa, Nigeria depends on imported petroleum products due to low refining capacity.
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