The “Electric Vehicle Transition and Green Mobility Bill,” sponsored by Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, just passed its second reading in the Senate. This bill goes beyond a simple idea to encourage green practices. It is a major plan to completely change the Nigerian auto industry and focus on building vehicles locally.
The bill, as reported by Channels TV and TVC News, is a classic “carrot and stick” approach. But the single most shocking, audacious, and “are-they-serious?” part of the bill is a single mandate: it would require every single fuel outlet in Nigeria to have an EV charging station.
Think about that. From the biggest Total station in Lagos to the most remote independent petrol station in a village, this bill wants to force a complete re-imagining of our national energy infrastructure. It’s a wild, bold promise. But can they pull it off?
The “Big Stick” Industrial Policy
First, let’s understand what a “second reading” means. It means the entire Senate has debated the core idea of the bill, and they have agreed, in principle, to move forward with it. It’s a huge hurdle cleared.
The fundamental goal of this bill isn’t just to clean the air. As the debate in the Senate made clear, the real goal is to get a piece of a $1.5 trillion global EV market.
Nigeria has the lithium, the nickel, and the manpower. Senator Kalu and other supporters are tired of Nigeria just exporting raw materials. They want to build the cars.
So, this bill is designed to force the issue.
- The Carrot (For Locals): To get Nigerians to buy in, the bill proposes massive incentives: tax holidays, import duty waivers for EV parts, toll-gate exemptions, and subsidies for both EV users and investors who build charging stations.
- The Stick (For Foreign Giants): This is the hardball part, aimed squarely at brands like Toyota, Honda, and their peers. The bill says:
- You must partner with Nigerian EV assemblers to operate here.
- You must set up a local EV assembly plant within three years.
- You must source at least 30% of your components locally.
- If you don’t? The fine is ₦250 million per breach.
- And for any unlicensed importers? A ₦500 million fine and seizure of all the goods.
This is a direct declaration of war on the old “import-and-sell” auto model. The message is clear: “If you want to sell to Nigeria’s 200 million people, you will build here.”
The Ethiopian Reality Check
This all sounds amazing on paper. But we’ve seen this movie before. The user’s own text points to the perfect, sobering example: Ethiopia.
In 2024, Ethiopia passed an even stricter law: a total ban on the import of petrol-powered vehicles. A year later, the results are in: EV adoption is still painfully low. Why? For the exact reasons you’d expect.
- Cost: EVs are still far too expensive for the average citizen, even with tax incentives.
- Infrastructure: This is the killer. What good is a ban on petrol cars when the country has a tiny number of charging stations (reports suggest around 100 in the entire country) and an unreliable power grid?
The Ethiopian experiment is a flashing red warning light for Nigeria. It proves that you can’t just ban the old way; you have to make the new way possible.
The “Electric Dream” vs. The “Electric Reality”
This brings us back to that wild, audacious mandate: “every fuel outlet must have an EV charging station.”
The bill’s sponsors are smart. They know infrastructure is the only thing that matters. This mandate is their attempt to solve the “chicken-and-egg” problem (no one buys EVs because there are no chargers; no one builds chargers because no one has EVs).
But this is where the bill collides with Nigeria’s reality. It’s the same reality facing the Nigerian Railway Corporation, which just announced its own 5-year plan to transition to electric-powered trains.
Nigeria is suddenly having a massive “electric dream,” with plans for electric cars and electric trains. But this dream is happening in a country that is still struggling to reliably power our homes and factories.
Before this bill can become law, it has been sent to the Senate Committee on Industry. They have four weeks to review it. You can be sure that the lobbyists for the big auto importers and the petrol station owners are already lining up.
The question they’ll all be asking is the same one we are: “This is a great idea… but who, exactly, is going to pay for all this? And where will the light come from?”
