• Overview

On 18 December 2019, the National Automotive Design and Development Council convened a national stakeholder’s workshop on the implementation of the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI) in Nigeria. The workshop was held at the Ibeto Hotels Apo, in Abuja Nigeria and was attended by more than 60 participants drawn from government, private sector, media and academia. The workshop objective was to disseminate the fuel economy baseline study as well as validate fuel economy policy proposals for the country.

Nigeria is among the African countries being supported to put in place policies that would promote the import of more fuel-efficient vehicles. The project in Nigeria was supported by UNEP through the European Commission Funds.

Nigeria Fuel Economy policyThe stakeholder workshop was opened by the Jelani Aliyu MFR, Director General of the National Automotive Design Council who sought the support of all involved stakeholders for the success of the project.

Due to the decentralized nature of collecting vehicle registration data, the project encountered challenges in acquiring verifiable data to carry out the Baseline. However, the usable data provided gave an average fuel economy value of 9.56 l/100km which is quite high compared to the global average of 7.2l/100Km in 2017.  

Stakeholders agreed that a strategic mix of vehicle emission control policies, fuel tax, initial vehicle registration tax and annual vehicle registration tax (circulation tax) should be implemented.

The following were some of the recommendations:

  • The country will require a centralized system for collecting National Vehicle registration data
  • There will be benefit in implementation of Vehicle Labelling and a wider public awareness campaign on the use of fuel-efficient vehicles
  • Government should enforce importation of more fuel-efficient cars meeting a minimum standard of Euro 4 and provide an import age limit.
  •  Tax waivers should be granted for hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles
  • Government should consider implementing a vehicle feebate and rebate scheme.
  • Enforcement of mandatory annual inspections while improving vehicle emission testing.
  • Consider use of alternatives fuels e.g. electricity.
  • Provide a comprehensive national transportation policy which considers plans to improve public transportation for decongestion of urban roads.
  • Proper air quality management frameworks will need to be established to continuously quantify vehicular emissions and their impact on health to aid in the implementation of control and prevention policies.

Nigeria Fuel Economy Policy