Nigerian entrepreneur Mustafa Gazibo is now building solar battery-powered buses to promote clean energy and curb pollution.
Nigerian entrepreneur Mustafa Gazibo has been converting petrol minibuses to electric vehicles in his workshop, but he is now going a step further to build solar battery-powered buses from scratch to promote clean energy and curb pollution. are.
Africa’s top producer and exporter of crude oil has short supplies of heavily subsidized gasoline and electricity – a combination that could discourage anyone from investing in electric vehicles.
But Gazibo, a 30-year-old university drop-out from Maiduguri city in Nigeria’s northeast, is fearless. He says rising global oil prices and pollution have made electric vehicles a worthwhile option in Nigeria.
In his workshop, he has already stripped out combustion engines from 10 mini-buses, which powered them from solar batteries. He said the buses, which have been plying for more than a month now, cover a distance of 100 km on a single charge.
His most ambitious project is building buses from scratch. These will be equipped with solar panels and batteries.
“As I’m talking to you in my workshop right now, we’re building a 12-seater bus that can travel up to 200 kilometers on a single charge,” Gazibo said.
“Before the end of this month we are going to unveil the bus which will be the first of its kind in the whole of Nigeria,” he said, adding that his workshop had the capacity to produce 15 buses a month.
In Nigeria, like most of Africa, electric vehicles have yet to gain traction because they are more expensive and have little electricity and no infrastructure to charge the vehicles.
For now, Gazibo has one charging station powered by solar power.
There are other constraints like lack of foreign exchange which makes it difficult to import parts. Therefore, he wants to source them in Nigeria.
“We are substituting some materials with local ingredients to reduce our costs and maximize profits,” Gazibo said.
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