President Bola Tinubu has approved the deployment of electric-powered vehicles for the North East Development Commission (NEDC) to ease transportation challenges in the region.
Chairman of the Commission, General Paul Tarfa (Rtd), disclosed this after a brief meeting with the Vice President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday.
He said the Commission is putting modalities in place to build a 5kva or 10kva solar-powered grid to bridge power supply gaps.
The Ministry of Youths Development, in a strategic partnership with the Presidential CNG Initiative (PI-CNG), had initiated the distribution of 2,000 CNG-powered tricycles to address the transportation needs of the youths in the country.
The Minister, Dr Jamila Bio Ibrahim, said the collaborative effort aims to provide opportunities for young individuals to engage in sustainable and environmentally friendly transportation solutions, while also creating avenues for economic empowerment and skill development within the youth demography.
Fielding newsmen on the initiative in the NEDC, General Tarfa recalled Tinubu’s directive that cars, as soon as possible, should use CNG or electric vehicles.
“We at the Northeast Development Commission did a thorough analysis of our region, because we cover six states in the Northeast Region, and looked at the comparable advantage between CNG and e-vehicles,” he said.
“And after our thorough analysis, we came to the conclusion that for the North East region the CNG could work, but e-vehicle can work better for many reasons.
“One is that our plan at the end of day is to create modular solar power units across the state which can be used to power this percentage of e-vehicles.
“We sought and got approval of the presidency for us to go ahead and come up with the framework of how we are going to deploy this e-mobility in the northeast and what kind of e-mobility, etc. And Mr. President graciously gave approval, and today we came to present to him the kind of E-vehicles we are going to introduce in the Northeast.
“There are three categories. One is the E-busses, which can carry about 40 people or passengers at a given point in time, at the minimum, and that’s it for intrastate, not interstate. And also we brought some sample of e-taxis which normally will carry three people passengers as well as the driver, and we also brought in a highly modified tricycle.
“Most of the tricycle we have in the North East or elsewhere only carry three people plus the driver four, but in our case, we have modified it to carry eight people plus the driver, and it’s fully covered and very convenient, and we are also knowing the kind of weight and people we are going to carry. We’ve asked our engineers to modify the physical structure of the tricycle. when you look at it, you can see the tires are bigger, the primes are bigger, and so and so forth.
“In doing that, we also consider local content that the body can be fabricated locally in the North East or somewhere else in the region.
“So, today we made a presentation to the President. And delightfully, Mr. President approved that we should go ahead and deploy the e-mobility in the northeast in region.”
Tarfa acknowledged that there could be some challenges, however, assured of plans to address the inadequacies.
