FG Distributes Free Cooking Gas to Nigerians

The federal government commenced the distribution of free cooking gas to 1 million homes on Tuesday,28 May in Nigeria.
The initiative is in line with the federal government plan to discourage the use of fire wood, charcoal and other harmful fuels and the project has the target of reaching 250,000 households annually in the next four years.
The Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources is carrying the initiative under the Decade of Gas cooking gas outreach programme as the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, started the distribution on Tuesday.
Ed Ubong, the Coordinating Director, Decade of Gas Programme, revealed to journalists that the distribution of cooking gas to rural women was in line with the President Bola Tinubu’s initiative on gas.
He said, “As part of the LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) grassroot programme, we will be committed to see how we can move over a million cooking gas cylinders to mainly women in rural areas, which is why we came here in Apo. We could have stayed in the central part of Abuja, but here we tried to cover all the general areas in Abuja district.
“Cooking gas, of course, is cleaner. Nigeria has significant gas resources, so we partner with the private sector players, working under the supervision of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas) to see how we deploy over one million cylinders, about 250,000 every year to all parts of Nigeria, regional areas and states.
“This is the pilot phase and we are committed towards this as we move more Nigerians to start using gas. Today we are distributing about 1,000 cylinders filled with cooking gas here in Abuja.”
When he was asked about those funding the project, he said that it was funded by private sectors and the gases were filled before giving them out for free.
According to him, with time when they get the right sponsorship, they may even begin to refill for free.
He stated that the Decade of Gas programme worked very closely with the local council representatives who knew where all the rural women stay and the Smart Gas team also visited the women in their homes to be sure that they were giving out these cooking gases to the right women.