Tinubu Gives States a October 1 Deadline to Cut Transport Fares

President Bola Tinubu has renewed pressure on state governments to ensure that cheaper gas-powered transportation actually shows up in commuters' pockets, insisting that Nigerians should begin noticing real drops in transport fares from October 1.

The push builds on an earlier commitment Tinubu made in late August, when he met with the Nigeria Governors' Forum at the Presidential Villa and announced that governors had agreed, on their own initiative, to accelerate the shift toward compressed natural gas and electric vehicles as a way of easing the burden of transport costs across their states. He followed that meeting with a separate sit-down with governors from his own All Progressives Congress, where the October 1 target was reaffirmed.

At the heart of the plan is a simple cost argument. Tinubu has repeatedly pointed out that a vehicle running on CNG burns through 60 to 80 percent less in fuel spending compared to one running on petrol, and has argued that this gap should translate directly into what commuters pay at the bus stop. Following the initial announcement, the federal and state governments agreed to form a joint committee tasked with turning that logic into an actual rollout plan.

The timing of the push is notable. It comes as debate continues to swirl around Nigeria's 2023 decision to scrap its long-running petrol subsidy, a move that sent fuel and transport costs climbing and has become a flashpoint in the run-up to the 2027 elections. Opposition figures, including ADC presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, have used the fallout to question the administration's economic management, while the Presidency has continued to defend CNG expansion as the more sustainable route rather than reviving subsidies.

Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics add weight to the urgency behind the announcement. The average fare for an intra-city bus trip hit N1,431.25 in May, according to NBS data cited by Nairametrics, a rise of nearly 2.5 percent from the month before and a jump of almost 39 percent compared to the same period a year earlier, underlining just how sharply transport costs have climbed for ordinary households.

In his latest update, Tinubu cited a string of examples he said prove the model already works where it's been tried. CNG buses deployed to Pacesetter Transport in Oyo reportedly pulled the Lagos-Ibadan fare from about N8,000 down to N3,200 during their initial rollout. Adamawa has seen alternative-energy transit cut fares by half, from N8,000 to N4,000, while Enugu's fleet of 100 CNG buses brought the Enugu-Nsukka route down from N2,500 to N1,500.

He also highlighted Plateau, where government-backed buses now move roughly 13,000 commuters daily at a flat N200, against commercial fares that often exceed N500 for comparable routes. In the capital, a partnership with the National Union of Road Transport Workers has extended a 40 percent fare cut to passengers on CNG-converted vehicles across several Abuja routes, with the Area 1 to Gwagwalada fare falling from N1,500 to N900, Nyanya from N700 to N420, and Wuse from N400 to N240.

Kaduna's rollout, according to the President, has been running the longest, with 100 CNG buses offering free transportation on major routes over the past year, carrying an estimated 3.2 million passengers and saving commuters more than N3.5 billion in the process. Niger State has recorded fare drops on the Suleja-Abuja corridor from roughly N800 to N550, Abia has introduced 40 electric buses with fares subsidized by half, and Borno's alternative-energy transport now charges between N50 and N100 on routes where commercial operators demand N300 to N600.

Nationally, Tinubu said more than 120,000 vehicles have already been converted to CNG over the past three years, backed by over 400 certified conversion centers and more than 90 refueling stations, with an additional 100,000 conversion kits reportedly in the pipeline and 500 more refueling stations planned. Edo, Kano, Delta, Kwara, Lagos and Akwa Ibom were all named as states with active or expanding CNG programmes, with Kano alone said to have converted more than 1,000 commercial vehicles.

Industry voices have largely welcomed the direction. Ismaeel Ahmed, chief executive of the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles, said translating the lower cost of CNG into cheaper fares would ensure that government investment in the gas sector delivers a direct benefit to ordinary Nigerians.

Not everyone is convinced the deadline will hold, however. Some commentators have questioned whether this amounts to a genuinely new policy push or simply a fresh deadline attached to commitments the government had already made months earlier, a skepticism rooted in how often previous cost-reduction pledges have slipped past their original timelines.

For his part, Tinubu has continued to reject calls to bring back the petrol subsidy as a shortcut to easing pressure on households, arguing that returning to a system that once drained trillions of naira from public finances would leave the economy exposed to every swing in global oil prices. He maintains that the state-level gains already being recorded are not projections but savings Nigerians are already living with, and that the task now is to accelerate and scale the programme so that more commuters feel the difference in their daily fares.