Why FG has no plans to ban importation of gas cylinders

By Ezurike Ugochukwu

The federal government has debunked as rumour information making rounds that it has plans to ban the importation of gas cylinders in the country stating that it needs to move quickly to ensure the supply of more cylinders nationwide.

Banning importation now the government said would not be a solution but that Nigeria should rather build local capacity gradually until the nation can become self-sufficient in cylinder production and usage to reducing emission.

The Senior Special Assistant on Domestic Gas in the Office of the Vice President, Mr Dayo Adesina who made the disclosure said building of local capacity out to come first.

Adesina explained that the National LPG Expansion and Implementation plan was to discourage the use of firewood and other energy sources that are not environmentally friendly and subsequently get LPG to the remotest of villages.

stating that the country’s 2 million gas cylinders with a population of over 200 million people is quite poor when compared to other countries.

Meeting  the LPG expansion plan in the country at the moment is farfetched as the country still has a lot of cylinder deficits to fill  according to Adesina, who is also the Programme Manager of the National LPG Expansion

The country’s 2 million gas cylinders when compared with the population of the country put at 200 million is quite poor, emphasising that Brazil, with a population similar to Nigeria, has a cylinder population of 150 million and an additional five million injected annually with India and Mexico both having a cylinder population of about 100 million.

He said, “But Nigeria, with over 200 million people has less than two million cylinders. So, if you had 20 cylinder manufacturing plants it still won’t be enough.

“We have a new one that opened in 2019, two that are shut down and three that have sought approval for manufacturing. You cannot ban what you don’t have. Banning importation is not going to solve the problem. It is going to worsen the problem.”

“What the government is doing is simple: take a mixture of local and foreign production. The ones that are to be imported, the manufacturer can supply the first set, the second set must be manufactured locally in Nigeria. If they are not ready to set up here we pair them up with local investors and technical partners,’’ Adesina stated.

Gas has been identified by the governmnet as a cheaper and more environmentally friendly source of energy now cost of petreoleum products are going high.

It would be recalled that government in April 2021, announced plans to inject 5 to 10 million Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders into the market in the next one year to help improve safety and deepen LPG (otherwise known as cooking gas) utilization in Nigeria.