Oando Clean Energy, a Nigerian energy company, has announced its ambitious plan to roll out 12,000 electric buses in the country. This initiative is part of the company’s commitment to aiding Nigeria’s race towards net-zero emissions by 2060 and aligns with the global climate change agenda.
Mr Ademola Ogunbanjo, Executive Vice President of the company, announced this on Wednesday in Dubai during his presentation titled “Aiding Nigeria’s race to Net Zero by 2020” at the ongoing climate change conference known as COP28.
Ogunbanjo also said that the company would begin assembly of electric buses in Nigeria by 2026, saying viability test and Environment Impact Assessment for the project were already concluded.
He said two buses had already been deployed in Lagos which would be up-scaled to 50 soon out of the 2000 planned for the state.
“The agenda is 2000 buses for Lagos, 12000 for Nigeria; nobody must import 12000 buses into the country when we have the capacity to build a local assembly.
“We will be assembling vehicles in Nigeria forever; making it electric does not change anything.
“Whatever it needs, we only need to work together, private sector and the government, to ensure we pull resources together and build local capacity.
“It is the only way we can grow. The error we made in the oil and gas era when we did not build as much local capacity as we could or should have. We won’t repeat that with energy transition.
“Energy consumption and transportation form the two largest contributors to greenhouse gases emissions in our country. Transportation more so because we are largely a logistic based economy. We don’t manufacture much; we import a lot and we move whatever we imported around.
“With wind energy project and sustainable transport system, we can decarbonise our economy; if we can decarbonise the transportation sector in Nigeria, we would have made a giant stride towards the achievement of our Net Zero agenda by 2060,” he said.
Earlier in his address, Dr Aionojie Irune, the President of the Oando Clean Energy, said the company was moved by the show of seriousness that Nigeria had exhibited in the energy transition conversation.
He said that Oando Clean Energy was committed to the 2060 Net Zero target.
“We as, Oando, have stepped forward to effectively take a portion of that commitment of the government; we believe that seven to 10 per cent of that commitment is something we can definitely impact as a company.
“That is a fundamental basis for what we have done in Lagos State on the mass transit. We moved them from diesel operated buses to electric buses.
“These are all agenda to continue to shift us from largely from fossil fuels energy generated and transport system to renewable based energy generation and transport system,” he said. (NAN
