The long queues of vehicles at stations selling compressed natural gas have become a source of worry to Nigerians using the cleaner fuel.

The PUNCH reports that truck owners now keep vigil at the NIPCO CNG station in Ibafo as they wait in the queue to refill their cylinders.

Commenting on this, a former National Secretary of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Mr Mike Osatuyi, lamented that vehicles now spend hours in queues to get their cylinders filled with CNG.

While saying this was caused by the limited number of CNG stations, Osatuyi likened the current situation to past fuel scarcity episodes.

Speaking with newsmen recently, he said, “Vehicles often spend hours—and trucks, days—at CNG filling stations due to inadequate service capacity. Specific areas like Zuba-Kubwa Road, Abuja Airport Road, the Mountain of Fire area of Ibafo on the Ibadan Expressway, and the Ibadan Tollgate are just a few examples where users experience long wait times.”

According to him, the “poor and uncoordinated implementation of the CNG initiative has turned it into a national embarrassment despite its noble intent.”

Osatuyi criticised the Federal Government over the inadequate infrastructure that continues to hamper the effective implementation of the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative, nearly two years after its launch.

Osatuyi lauded President Bola Tinubu’s initial enthusiasm and patriotic drive to introduce CNG as an alternative fuel source at the beginning of his administration.

He noted that had similar efforts been made two decades earlier, petrol consumption in Nigeria could have been reduced by as much as 50 per cent by now.

Highlighting the numerous benefits of CNG, he said these include economic viability, environmental sustainability, reduced air pollution, lower transportation costs, and improved safety.

Osatuyi acknowledged the President’s appointment of a Minister of Gas and the establishment of the PCNGi, being coordinated by Mr Michael Oluwagbemi.

However, Osatuyi pointed out that despite plans to deploy 200,000 new CNG-powered buses and tricycles nationwide, the infrastructure required to support this transition, such as conversion centres and CNG refuelling stations, remains grossly insufficient.

The current national budget allocation for the initiative, he said, fails to match the pace at which Nigerians are converting their vehicles to CNG, even amid high conversion costs.

He emphasised the need for broader consultation and education involving stakeholders in the oil and gas sector, stressing that the PCNGi committee should not assume a monopoly of knowledge.

Osatuyi urged the government to study and replicate successful global models to accelerate Nigeria’s transition to CNG.

He called on Tinubu to intervene directly, asking that existing IPMAN filling stations be allowed to accommodate both CNG and traditional fuels such as petrol and diesel.

This, he argued, would eliminate the need for building entirely new CNG-dedicated stations and position Nigeria alongside leading countries in CNG adoption like China, Iran, India, and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the PCNGI Programme Coordinator, Oluwagbemi, said recently that about 175 new CNG refilling stations will be ready in the next 12 to 18 months.

According to him, the 175 stations will reduce the stress faced by Nigerians in accessing CNG.

Oluwagbemi expressed satisfaction that the nation has moved from 11 CNG stations last year to 65 in 2025.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we are in a much better place than we were when we kicked off this programme this time last year. When we started in January of last year, there were fewer than 11 functional CNG stations in Nigeria.

“Most of them lacked customers because people did not know about CNG as a potential fuel for transportation. Today, we’re in a much different place. We’ve used the better part of last year to kick off a very intense conversion programme after an intense awareness campaign that took us across the country,” he said.