President Bola Tinubu has approved the North-East Development Commission (NEDC) request to deploy electric-powered vehicles to ease transportation challenges in the region.
The commission’s chairman, Mohammed Alkali, disclosed this to State House correspondents after a brief meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday.
He said the commission is putting modalities in place to build a 5kVA or 10kVA solar-powered grid to bridge power supply gaps.
Apart from the electric vehicles that have been modified to carry more passengers and goods, the commission will also deploy electric tricycles in the region.
According to Alkali, the commission conducted a thorough analysis of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and electric vehicles (e-vehicles) and concluded that e-vehicles are better suited for the region.
He added that the decision was influenced by the desire to create modular solar power units across states, providing a standby power source for the e-vehicles.
He said the e-vehicle fleet will comprise three categories: e-buses designed for intra-state movements with a minimum capacity of 40 people per trip, e-taxis capable of carrying three people including the driver, and modified tricycles enhanced to carry eight people including the driver.
The chairman said: “We are here today to brief Mr. President on one very critical activity he has approved which we had to engage in the last two months.
“As you can recall, there’s a directive from the President that cars as soon as possible should use CNG or electric vehicles, and we at the Northeast Development Commission did a thorough analysis of our region, because we cover six states in Northeast Region, and look at the comparable advantage between CNG and e-vehicles.
“After our thorough analysis, we concluded that for the Northeast region, yes, the CNG could work, but e-vehicles can work better for many reasons.
“One is that our plan at the end of the day is to create modular solar power units across the state that can be used to power this percentage of e-vehicles.
“On that note, earlier on, we sought and got approval from 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 samples 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 tricycles 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 prime is bigger, and so and so forth.”
By: Babajide Okeowo
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