President Bola Tinubu has given approval for the North East Development Commission (NEDC) to deploy the use of electric powered vehicles to ease transportation challenges in the region.
Managing director /CEO of North East Development Commission, Mohammed G Alkali disclosed this after a brief meeting with the Vice President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday.
Alkali was accompanied by Chairman of the Commission, Genera Paul Tarfa (Rtd), Dr Abubakar Garba Ilia, Executive Director Admin and Finance as well as Dr AbdulSalam Ahmed, executive director operations.
He said the Commission is putting modalities in place to build a 5kva or 10kva solar powered grid to bridge power supply gaps.
Beyond the electric vehicles that has been modified to carry more passengers and goods, electric tricycles are also expected to be deployed in the region.
Recall that 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, Alkali recalled President 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 Northeast Region, and looked at the comparable advantage between CNG and e-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,” he said.
Continuing, the MD who acknowledged that there could be some challenges, however, assured of plans to address the inadequacies.
“Yes, there will be difficulties. For instance, if you talk about gas powered CNG, the gas has to come from somewhere, because we don’t have gas in the north for now. But e-vehicle what you need is power. To power all e-facilities as part of the arrangement is for us to establish a very comprehensive composite charging facilities for all our e-vehicles or e-tricycle. This already a part of the work plan, which we are trying to do. In addition, we’re also considering establishing five Kva or 10 Kva solar powered grids stand alone, so that this can be back up for the inadequacy of the power supplies.
“We are aware of all these challenges, but sometimes with challenges come opportunities and when we start, we may have one or two, three challenges in terms of power bank, but we already made a plan to see that, beside the usual generating plant, we are also going to back up some solar power grids stand alone to power this station, we are going to build.”
