Vice President of Nigeria, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, has said that the Federal Government was working to ensure that 13 million households embrace cooking gas in the next five years.
He stated this on Friday while commissioning a Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) Cylinder Manufacturing Plant in Lekki area of Lagos State.
“The goal is to achieve five million Metric Tonnes (5,000,000 MT) of domestic, commercial and industrial LPG utilization in 10 years.
“Specifically, for household cooking, we are targeting a 40 percent adoption rate (i.e. 13.8m households) in five years, and 73 percent adoption in 10 years (33.3m households),” he stated.
Osinbajo also reiterated the current administration’s commitment to creating jobs for Nigerians.
According to him, the LPG sub-sector of the nation’s economy has the potential of providing two million jobs.
Osinbajo who also heads the National Economic Council (NEC) said the Federal Government has demonstrated its commitment by establishing an Inter-Ministerial Committee and a multi-stakeholder national coordinating body – the National LPG Expansion Programme.
The Vice President noted that progress had been made in LPG adoption with the removal of five percent VAT from the domestic pricing of the commodity to discourage importation.
“When we came into office in 2015, one of the issues we identified, was the abysmally low domestic utilization of LPG in Nigeria,” he added.
The vice-president said that it was wrong for Nigeria to continue to rely on biomass fuels such as firewood and traditional fuels such as petrol and diesel for their domestic energy needs.
