Tinubu okays deployment of electric vehicles to North-East

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved the introduction of electric vehicles in Nigeria’s north-eastern region as part of efforts to reduce the high cost of transportation.

Following a meeting with the President, the Managing Director and CEO of the North-East Development Commission (NEDC), Mr. Mohammed Alkali, informed State House correspondents of the decision on Wednesday.

He explained that the NEDC conducted a comprehensive analysis of the region’s needs, considering the benefits of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and electric vehicles (e-vehicles), before opting for the latter.

The initiative is expected to ease the financial burden on residents, particularly in the six states covered by the NEDC, as electric vehicles promise lower operating costs compared to conventional fuel-powered vehicles.

“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.”

“In addition, we’re also considering establishing five KVA or 10 KVA solar-powered grid, stand-alone, so that this can be backup for the inadequacy of the power supplies, so we’re aware of all these challenges, but sometimes with challenges come opportunities. When we start, yes, we may have one or two challenges, but we already made a plan to see that besides the usual generating plant, we are also going to back up with some stand-alone solar power grid to power this station we are going to build.”