The Minister of Transportation, Sa’idu Alkali, has disclosed that the Federal Government had commenced the conversion of railway locomotive engines from diesel to Compressed Natural Gas.
The minister disclosed this during an inspection of the retrofitting exercise at Idu train station in Abuja recently.
Speaking with journalists after the inspection, Alkali explained that the process was at an advanced stage, adding that the engine was designed to initially run on diesel, but will now be changed to use gas.
The minister further stated that the conversion of the engines would use both diesel and CNG.
He explained that when completed, the engine would run on 70 per cent gas and 30 per cent on diesel.
He said, “We started in the last one month. Nigeria is the first African country to convert diesel engines to gas. The engine will work 30 per cent on diesel and 70 per cent on gas. At the time you want to start the locomotive, you use diesel, but after starting it, you switch to gas, and then it will keep on moving.
“We have interacted with the engineers and the process is at an advanced stage and we are going to test-run the engine and then determine when we will start rolling out the CNG locomotives.”
Speaking on the benefits, he noted, “We will bring down the cost of maintenance to about 60 to 70 per cent. We will control emissions because once the locomotive is moved to gas, we are not going to have any carbon emissions.”
According to the minister, the process will start with the Abuja-Kaduna rail corridor since the conversion workshop is located in Abuja, promising that the expansion will spread to other corridors in the country.
“We want to start with Kaduna, Abuja, because the workshop is in Abuja here once we finish the retrofitting, we will then continue with all the remaining corridors.”
The Federal Government has chosen gas as the country’s transition fuel as it aims to achieve zero-emission by 2050.
