Osagie Okunbor meets Ghana’s Minister of Energy, Matthew Opoku Prempeh, at the 7th Nigeria International Energy Summit in Abuja.
SNEPCo MD, Elohor Aiboni, receives Ministers and other dignitaries at the Shell booth during the 7th Nigeria International Energy Summit in Abuja.
Annually, there is a global international Equinox Earth Day Celebration to renew our collective commitment to honour the earth and promote peace for all to live and enjoy the earth that belongs to us all.
As we celebrate the Equinox Earth Day on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, we must hold on to our struggle for freedom and independence with the strong conviction that the earth belongs to everyone. This day reminds us that Nigeria belongs to all Nigerians and not the ruling class oligarchy who are working in connivance with foreigners to appropriate it as personal property.
The Nigerian ruling elites who are working with their foreign capitalist fundamentalists to appropriate our lands know the truth that the earth belongs to us all. Therefore, as we celebrate the global Equinox Earth Day, we must all rise in resistance to the Nigerian ruling elites and their foreign collaborators to monopolise the earth that belongs to us all.
This year’s Equinox Earth Day Celebration reminds us that until we stand up in unionism to reject the practice of few owning the earth that is a natural gift from God to all of us, we will continue to be enslaved by them. We must all know that the solution to peace and conflicts that have eluded Nigeria, and the world is our inability to collectively stop a few from having absolute control and ownership of the earth that belongs to us all.
And, until we collectively pursue this goal, inequality, poverty, and conflict will continue unabated with the ruling class oligarchy pretending not to know they are the real problem.
As we celebrate this global event, we must reflect on the teachings of Henry George that the earth belongs to everyone born on earth to live in comfort and peace. It must not be the property of oligarchs, capitalists, and fascists.
By Audu Liberty Oseni, Coordinator, MAWA Foundation
Activists have frowned at submissions made on Monday, March 18, 2024, by Saudi Aramco CEO, Amin Nasser, that the energy transition is failing, and policymakers should abandon the “fantasy” of phasing out oil and gas, as demand for fossil fuels is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.
“In the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts as it collides with five hard realities,” Nasser said during a panel interview at the CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston, Texas.
“A transition strategy reset is urgently needed, and my proposal is this: We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions,” the CEO said to applause from the audience.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency forecast last year that peak oil, gas and coal demand would come in 2030. Nasser said demand is unlikely to peak anytime soon, let alone by that year. Nasser suggested that the IEA is focusing on demand in the U.S. and Europe and needs to focus on the developing world as well.
Nasser said alternative energy sources have been unable to displace hydrocarbons at scale, despite the world investing more than $9.5 trillion over the past two decades. Wind and solar currently supply less than 4% of the world’s energy, while total electric vehicle penetration is less than 3%, he said.
Reacting to Nasser’s claims, environmental watchdog group, 350.org, said he (Nasser) wasn’t an isolated case as other oil executives at the event claimed that a rapid phase out of fossil fuels is “not based on reality”.
Jeff Ordower, 350.org’s North America Director, said: “The fossil fuel industry continues to make distorted claims about our energy future. They work night and day to torpedo a transition to renewable energy and then have the audacity to critique the slowness of the transition itself. CERAWeek should highlight a global vision toward a clean and equitable future, and instead, we get talking points from the 1970s.
“Fossil fuel emissions account for more than 90% of global emissions and this industry announces obscene profits year over year. The fossil fuel industry is thriving, when people across the world are having to choose between eating and heating. We should be skeptical of any solutions touted by the industry because it’s clear they don’t have a real interest in halting the climate crisis.
“What these executives are purposefully leaving out are the trillions of dollars they profit from every year, that instead, could be invested in the transition they call unrealistic.
“Wind and solar energy initiatives are producing record amounts of clean electricity year after year and getting cheaper every day. We currently do have the tools and technology. We do have the resources; we just need to redirect them. We must make the fossil fuel industry and rich nations who have been by far the greatest ones to blame for the climate crisis pay.”
Meanwhile, the share of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix has barely fallen in the 21st century from 83% to 80%, Nasser said. Global demand has increased by 100 million barrels of oil equivalent per day during the same period and will reach an all-time high this year, the CEO said.
Gas has grown 70% since the start of the century, Nasser said. The transition from coal to gas is responsible for two-thirds of the reductions in carbon emissions in the U.S., he said.
“This is hardly the future picture some have been painting,” Nasser said. “Even they are starting to acknowledge the importance of oil and gas security.”
Developing nations in the global south, meanwhile, will drive oil and gas demand as prosperity rises in those nations, which represent more than 85% of the world’s population, the CEO said. These nations receive less than 5% of the investment targeting renewable energy, he said.
Nasser said the world should focus more on reducing emissions from oil and gas in addition to renewables. The CEO said efficiency improvements alone over the past 15 years have reduced global energy demand by almost 90 million barrels per day oil equivalent. Wind and solar, meanwhile, have substituted only 15 million barrels over the same period, he said.
“We should phase in new energy sources and technologies when they are genuinely ready, economically competitive and with the right infrastructure,” Nasser said.
The challenges confronting our communities and people generally are interconnected. They are often analysed and presented as though they operate in silos. The reality is that they operate in intricately connected webs and must be understood as such. Our lands are grabbed for extractive or exploitative purposes. Extractivism in turn drives climate change.
Climate change in turn triggers more extraction, soil degradation as well as land resource issues. The cycle goes on until we take action to break it. The purpose of this conversation is for us to unpack the components of the crises, locate the critical nodes and points of vulnerability, and act to propel transformation using cultural tools.
We will together look at three key things: Land grabbing, extractivism, and climate change. As already noted, they are interconnected and are not necessarily hierarchical or sequential.
Land grabbing
Ownership of land in Nigeria was historically in the hands of individuals or communities. Today, through a military decree promulgated on 29th March 1978, communities have been dispossessed of their lands while ownership has been claimed by the state, euphemistically on behalf of the dispossessed. By virtue of the overbearing control of the military over the county’s governance structure, that Decree was inserted in the 1999 Constitution and barricaded in as inviolable.
In other words, there should be no debate over its operations. The forced supremacy of the Land Use Act can be seen in its section 47 (1) which states that the Act is literally an outlaw and shall have effect notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any law including the constitution.
The Land Use Decree or Act was designed in a colonial template of resource appropriation that deprives the colonised of the fundamental resource and ensures that it is owned and used to meet the utilitarian needs or other means of enjoyment of the colonisers.
Those whose lands are grabbed may only be compensated for the loss of economic crops and improvements on the land. In practice, the compensations have been grossly inadequate, if not outrightly insulting. Consider for example a payment of N100 for a mango tree when one mango fruit could go as much, and such a tree would bear hundreds of fruits for several years.
Lands may be grabbed by different means, and for diverse purposes. By the Land Use Act, the government can grab any land by declaring that it is required for the public good. The use of such land would invariably change, with dire consequences. A forest could be cleared and replaced with a plantation or cash crops for export. A poor community could be demolished, the people get displaced and then their territory could be replaced with expensive resorts, hotels, or gated estates. Wetlands can be sand-filled and taken up for infrastructural purposes. The list goes on.
The Nigerian government claims ownership of minerals and petroleum resources in the subsoil. So, our lands can be grabbed for mining or oil and gas extraction, ostensibly for the common good. Because this often happens without free prior informed consent, when the people are called stakeholders what it means is that while the company and government share the profits, the communities own the pollution. This is also why such pollution is hardly ever cleaned up.
Land can also be directly grabbed through pollution. Two quick examples can show how this happens. A polluted stream by an oil spill becomes the waste dump of the polluter and usage for fishing or potable water is lost. Secondly, dumping of wastes on a parcel of land takes that land out of the control of communities. Often pollution is not an accidental exercise. It is used to dispose communities of their land and creeks and for the exploiter to assume ownership without accountability, responsibility, or a sense of respect for the owners.
Our quest for development without questions also permits lands to be grabbed for infrastructural development. Often such lands are taken without prior informed consent.
Our culture and language are tied to our land and our liberation is connected to both. Our culture nourishes and empowers us to stand against the commodification of Nature and of life. It helps us to defend what belongs to us. It draws boundaries that no one must cross. Our culture is our power!
Extractivism
Extractivism as a concept covers a complex of self-reinforcing practices, mentalities, and power differentials that promote and excuse socio-ecologically destructive modes of organising life through colonialism, militarisation, depletion, and dispossession. It is a mode of capitalist exploitation.
Although extractivism is used mostly in terms of mining and oil extraction, it is also present in farming, forestry, fishing, and in the provision of care. According to an entry in Wikipedia, “Extractivism is the removal of natural resources particularly for export with minimal processing. This economic model is common throughout the Global South and the Arctic region, but also happens in some sacrifice zones in the Global North in European extractivism.”
Extractivism destroys lands, pollutes the ocean, and destroys water bodies and wetlands. It results and feeds on land grabs, and sea grabs and is aiming at sky grabs with a rise in space enterprises.
Climate change
The fact that climate change is driven by dependence on fossil fuels – oil, gas, and coal – is well known. The main challenge is that the world keeps a blind eye to what communities suffer in the oil fields and focuses mostly on chasing carbon molecules in the atmosphere. This lack of focus on both ends of the pipeline has left communities destitute by damaging their lands and water bodies and thereby destroying their food systems, economies, and cultures.
The gradual agreement to terminate the petroleum civilisation, and Yasunize the world, implies that the time to remediate and restore lands damaged by oil and gas extraction has come. This remediation and restoration must be accompanied by reparation.
Our communities have suffered multiple impacts from climate change, extractivism, and land grabbing. Persistent pollution has been the lot of our communities. Studies such as the UNEP assessment of the Ogoni Environment and the recently published Bayelsa Environment and Oil Commission’s report titled “Environmental Genocide” all show the dire situation. Some communities have their soils contaminated with hydrocarbons to depths exceeding 10 meters. Waters are polluted with benzene and other carcinogens. The air is grossly polluted with a cocktail of noxious gases through gas flaring. These pollution do not readily disappear on their own. They must be consciously tackled and cleaned up. And the time for that is now.
Other impacts of climate change include sea level rise, coastal erosion and salinisation of the ocean. These affect local livelihoods and equally, provoke conflicts or displacement of communities.
Cultural resistance
Our lands are healed when extraction and land grabbing are challenged and overcome.
A major tool for successful resistance is our happiness. That is the source of our power. A happy community cannot easily be defeated.
Another key tool is our love. Our love for one another and our love for our land and culture. Love reinforces solidarity. Beyond love, we must build stubborn hope as an antidote to despondency. Hope empowers action. It emboldens.
Boldness empowers the telling of truth, including the reportage of destructive extraction and land grabbing. The oppressed must remain emboldened by the knowledge that while the rich worry about the end of the world, workers and exploited communities worry about the end of the day and have deep stakes in what happens tomorrow.
To resolutely stand against land grabbing and extractivism and also build resilience against climate change, our communities need Care and Repair Teams (CARTs) as key agents for overcoming trauma, stressors, and illnesses. These teams can also be agents to press for remediation, restoration, repairing, and reparation. These demands and their attainment require the use of every tool of cultural resistance.
By Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF)
As global calls for transition to cleaner energy fuels continue to grow, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) Ltd., Mr. Mele Kyari, has advocated for a differentiated approach to attaining energy transition for the African continent.
Kyari, who also said the Final Investment Decision (FID) on the Nigeria Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) Project would be taken in December 2024, made the call while speaking during a Leadership Dialogue Session at the ongoing CERAWeek Conference in Houston, United States, on Tuesday, March 19.
According to the GCEO, energy transition is a very difficult subject for countries especially in sub-Saharan Africa because geographically, the situations are different as a number of the countries are dealing with energy availability, not transition, and energy availability is closely linked to energy security.
“The world has seen all the challenges thrown up recently by geopolitical events. It is clear that before energy transition, countries must first attain security of energy supply in their countries. You cannot talk about energy security when it is not even available. In most sub-Saharan Africa, 70% of the population don’t have access to clean cooking fuels. Therefore, you must fill the supply gap first,” the GCEO stated.
He said although people talk about using the renewables to close the energy transition gap, the money for the renewables too must be found.
“If you insist on completing substitution today, then you have to deal with the problem of supply. For us today, the transition must be differentiated. Even if Africa decides to switch off its fossil fuels, it only accounts for just about 3% of the entire global emissions,” the GCEO added.
He said today, NNPC Ltd’s focus is to build its capacity to deliver gas to the domestic market and beyond.
He said as a gas-endowed country, Nigeria must utilise its abundant gas resources to provide the alternative fuel that it needs.
“We understand the arguments towards attaining energy transition, but the cheapest way to achieve that is through gas. We see clear opportunities that gas creates. Today we are building several trunklines and other gas infrastructure that will supply gas to a number of gas networks,” Kyari noted.
The GCEO said there is an ongoing engagement on the Nigeria Morocco Gas Pipeline Project (NMGP), which is at an advanced stage, to create a pipeline that will pass through thirteen African countries and all the way to Europe.
He hinted that the Final Investment Decision (FID) for the $25 billion Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP) Project will be made by December 2024.
He stated that as the largest oil and gas company and corporate entity in Africa, the NNPC Ltd is critical to Nigeria’s resource management and economic development.
He observed that the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021 has reformed Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, by ensuring that the NNPC Ltd emerged as a fully commercial entity that is not only accountable and responsible to its shareholders, but also one that is on the pathway of getting quoted on the stock exchange.
Kyari said Nigeria is fighting the menace of crude oil theft frontally and through the joint efforts of government and private security agencies, there has been some reasonable improvements in the restoration of the nation’s crude oil production.
“It is an abnormal situation, but it is well within control. We were able to recover some of our production and build back confidence so that investors can bring in their money. We are also doing global advocacy to governments and institutions, because stolen oil has to be taken to the market,” he stated.
He said an example of the improved security situation was when in 2022, Nigeria’s production fell below 1 million barrels per day, which was restored to 1.7 million barrels per day.
CERAWeek is one of the largest energy conferences in the world, drawing thousands of foremost global energy industry experts and a host of other corporate and government leaders from around the world annually to Houston, United States for a week-long conversation on the future of energy.
Organised by S&P Global, the conference has grown in recent years to accommodate new energy technologies and climate issues. The 2024 conference is expected to have participants from over 90 countries and will feature 1,400 speakers.
Under the theme “Multidimensional Energy Transition: Markets, Climate, Technology and Geopolitics”, the CERAWeek 2024 will explore “strategies for a multidimensional, multispeed and multifuel energy transition,” as the global energy industry tries to respond to, and offer insight into roadmap towards, growing demand for emissions reductions and moving towards cleaner forms of energy.
The Agents for Citizens-Driven Transformation (ACT) Programme has said that it supported 273 civil society organisations (CSOs), networks and coalitions to be credible and effective drivers of change for sustainable development in Nigeria.
Mr Damilare Babalola, ACT National Programme Manager, disclosed this while briefing newsmen on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Abuja, at the close-out ceremony of the Programme.
The theme of the programme is: “Reflecting on Results and Lessons Learned”.
Babalola said the five-year EU funded programme, implemented by the British Council, focused on strengthening internal, external and programmatic capabilities, as well as improved effective and inclusive regulatory environment for CSOs.
“We have worked with about 273 CSOs, out of which 233 was under the capacity development support in 10 states, while 40 network of CSOs in the area of enabling regulatory environment.
“Our work cuts across the 36 states and the FCT.
“ACT has also worked with strategic agencies of the government to improve compliance to regulations.
“We work with these agencies collaboratively over the last four to five years by ensuring that they understand the role of CSOs.
“We also ensure that citizens understand the mandate of these agencies in terms of how they regulate the space they work with,” he said.
Richard Garrett, Director, Open Societies Sub Sahara Africa, British Council, disclosed that about €13 million was spent on the five-year ACT programme in Nigeria.
“The main focus of the support has been around organisation’s capacity to help CSOs govern themselves and as a result, they can better serve their communities and establish themselves,” he said.
Garrett, who said lack of organisational structures and capacities were challenges affecting CSOs operation, called for more synergy and investment to facilitate their operations.
Also, Dr Ifeoma Chukwuma, Component Organisation Development Manager, said the ACT Programme was designed to have sustainable outlook, even after its close-out, which would contribute to sustainable development.
“We supported them by strengthening their financial management systems, monitoring and evaluation systems, developed policies that will help them to do their work and become more credible.
“We also developed all kinds of policies that they needed, and these capacities were not just pushed down to the CSOs, rather we used an approach that allowed them to do their own organisational assessment.
“We identify the areas that they want their capacities to be developed and by so doing, they received capacity development in the areas that they actually need development,” she said.
Also, Jan Knight, CSO Adviser, said: “We made sure all the training, coaching, mentoring and peer learning supports to the CSOs had common element of gender and social inclusion in everything that was done.
By Justina Auta
New potato varieties modified to withstand the deadly late blight disease said to be responsible for over 90 percent destruction on farmers field in Nigeria will be available to farmers from the 2025 planting season, Dr Charles Amadi, a breeder with the National Root Crop Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, has said.
Dr Amadi is the Principal Investigator, Global Biotechnology Potato Partnership (GBPP) project in Nigeria under the USAID-funded Feed the Future Project that is implemented in four countries – Kenya, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Nigeria.
The Partnership is coordinated by Michigan State University and involves various partners including the National Root Crop Research Institute, Umudike; the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF); and International Potato Centre (CIP).
He said: “After two years of research work in confinement and multilocation in potato growing belts of Nigeria, because of the uniform results from all locations, we are confident that threats of late blight would be successfully contained in Nigeria with the release of these late blight resistant varieties that will be available in 2025.
“We just need one more year of regulatory multilocation data to present them to National Biosafety Management Agency for environmental release. If we get the permit for environmental release this year, we will take them to On-farm trials in 2025. If they show consistency of performance across Nigeria, we will submit them to the National Varietal Release Committee for consideration and approval after field inspection by the technical sub-committee. Right now, all is on course, and we are working to meet that deadline.”.
Dr Amadi, who is the Director, Tuber Crop Research at NRCRI, noted that Nigeria ranks seventh among potato-producing countries in Africa and fourth in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an annual production yield of around 843,000 tonnes (830,000 long tons; 929,000 short tons) and an actual planted area of 270,000 hectares (670,000 acres). In spite of that, the average yield in Nigeria of 3.1 tonnes per hectare is among the world’s lowest.
Potato production in Nigeria predominantly occurs in small farms whose farmers still rely on traditional tools such as machetes and hoes as opposed to tractors. According to a 2012 study, an estimated 300,000 households in Nigeria engage in potato production, which translates to an average planted area of 1 hectare (2.5 acres) per household each year. The country’s main potato-planting region is the Plateau State (Barkin Ladi, Jos South, Riyom, Bokkos, and Mangu) which accounts for almost 90% of the national potato yield.
Other potato-producing areas include Obudu in Cross River and Mambilla in Taraba State. Additionally, some low level of production takes place in Kaduna and Kano states during the harmattan months of November to January. Potato production takes place in both the wet season (April till September) and the dry season (October till March).
Potato production in Nigeria faces many constraints, including disease and pest, unavailability of good-quality potato seeds, poor storage methods, insufficient education on farming methods and pest control, inadequate research and development, and inadequate farming equipment.
Meanwhile, researchers at the NRCRI are celebrating the two-year results from both the confined and multilocational trials of the genetically modified potato varieties currently under research in the country.
Dr Amadi said that after collecting and analysing data from the two-year research work, they have found that the biotech potatoes have a yield advantage of 300 percent over the best performing conventional variety when no fungicide is applied.
Dr Amadi said that, over the years, potato farmers in Nigeria were exposed to many threats including those who contemplated suicide because of potato failure due to late blight infestation but that two years of research on addressing the pest and diseases threats, the team was confident that succour has finally come for farmers in the country.
The research is currently being conducted in Nigeria’s potato growing belt of Plateau and Taraba states.
“In our evaluation in the confined and multi-locational trial sites at Kuru near Jos, Bokkos (Plateau State) and Kusuku in Mambilla (Taraba State), we discovered that, without the application of fungicides, the biotech potatoes were able to withstand late blights attacks and performed better and our farmers are happy,” he said.
“During these evaluations, biotech potatoes were grown together with their non-transformed relatives (Near Isogenic lines) and with some check varieties. In all these evaluations, when no fungicide is applied, late blight severely damaged the other potatoes, while the biotech potatoes were completely untouched.
“As a result, they gave yields that were 300% higher than their near Isogenic lines and the check varieties. However, when fungicide was applied, the yield difference disappeared showing that there were no yield losses in biotech potatoes because of the introduction of resistance genes.”
Dr Amadi added: “The biotech potatoes which are GM potatoes offer famers two vital benefits which includes increased yield and less use of fungicides. These translate into higher income for the farmers and better living conditions.”
Nigeria ranks seventh among potato-producing countries in Africa and fourth in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an annual production yield of around 843,000 tonnes (830,000 long tons; 929,000 short tons) and an actual planted area of 270,000 hectares (670,000 acres). In spite of that, the average yield in Nigeria of 3.1 tonnes/ha is among the world’s lowest.
As climate change accelerates, the urgency for countries to implement crucial plans that build resilience to impacts of climate change increases. To do this, they need both adequate funding and the national capacity and know-how to access available funding. This was the key conclusion of a virtual dialogue of the UNFCCC Climate Change Adaptation Committee this month.
Funds are needed for adaptation measures ranging from building seawalls against rising sea levels to increasing the resilience of the health systems of communities impacted by ever more frequent and severe storms and heatwaves.
“The transition of many countries from the planning to the implementation of adaptation requires more financial resources and enhanced countries’ capacities to access the entire range of available financial sources and instruments through respective long-term, country-owned strategies,” said Mariam Allam, Co-Chair of the UNFCCC’s Adaptation Committee.
Countries capture their adaptation priorities notably in national climate action pledges (nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs).
Concrete examples of how ministries get on the same page with regard to adaptation
The dialogue’s six panelists concurred on one critical element in developing strategies to achieve better access to finance for adaptation: making the value of resilience more visible within decision-making.
This requires capacities to interpret and apply climate data and to facilitate collaboration among different stakeholders.
For example, Fiji has a national climate finance strategy which pinpoints projects best suited to protect the country’s at-risk communities. It was created through widespread consultation with nearly all of the countries’ government ministries and development partners.
The strategy is based on an analysis of how much money the country will need to meet its climate goals. And it looks at which projects are already receiving financial support.
In Fiji, the government received requests for assistance from around 120 communities to build seawalls but lacks funding to build all of them.
Different ministries gathered and shared data on these communities which has allowed the government to prioritise which communities will receive seawalls to protect against rising sea levels. And which communities will need to be relocated altogether.
In Peru, Colombia and Brazil, a joint project dubbed Adapting public investment to climate change in Latin America has helped convince ministries to invest public resources in a way that helps building resilience to climate change.
For example, research was conducted in Peru following an extreme El Niño-related weather event to identify the key characteristics of infrastructure (notably roads and bridges) that had remained intact.
Representatives of the countries visited each other’s partner institutions with a view to integrate common insights into their own work.
Boosting capacity to interpret and apply climate data for funding proposals
The capacity to effectively interpret and apply climate data is essential for drafting proposals for international adaptation funds and for establishing the enabling conditions for other types of resilience-aligned finance to flow.
To this end, two frameworks were referenced in the virtual dialogue which can help guide countries through the steps required to establish an environment that makes it possible for the different sorts of adaptation finance to flow: the OECD climate adaptation investment framework and the Green Climate Fund and NDC partnership’s Climate Investment Planning and Mobilisation Framework.
Both are under development and will soon offer countries the opportunity to analyze their own situation and navigate important guidelines, tools and support opportunities, which they may access to develop their individual finance and investment strategies.
In addition, lessons from the past implementation of the GCF’s readiness programme are reflected in its recently adopted new readiness strategy 2024-2027.
The new strategy will make an important contribution to the development of the national capacities required to make the case for adaptation, e.g. by offering longer-term support and a specific window for direct access entities, among others.
Going forward, more opportunities for consultations and exchanges of experiences are needed to help close the growing adaptation finance gaps as more and more countries embark on their journeys to implement climate adaptation plans and strategies.
A Professor of Energy and Power Engineering, Osadolor Odia, has called for a state of emergency in power generation and distribution in Nigeria.
Odia, who is of the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, while delivering the university’s 108th inaugural lecture on Monday, March 18, 2024, said the move would address the energy deficiency in the country.
The lecture is titled: “Exploration and Exploitation of Energy Resources: Implication for Man and The Earth”.
The don said no nation could attain the requisite development with a high degree of energy deficiency as currently being experienced in Nigeria.
“Nigeria’s electricity availability is, to say the least, abysmal, as Nigeria tops the list of countries with the longest annual outage duration in Africa with 4,600 hours.
“This is 3,200 hours more than the next country on the list, Niger Republic,” he said.
According to him, about 90 million (46 per cent) of the nation’s total population are not connected to the grid.
“Where the grid is available, which corresponds to 54 per cent of the total population, power is only available for between four and 15 hours per week.
“With only about 3GW availability, Nigeria’s power production falls far short of demand, which is the primary constraint to the nation’s economic growth.
“Nigeria’s power situation is truly miserable compared to the huge population and the desired rate of development,” he said.
He said with the nation’s population now in excess of 200 million, Nigeria would require a generation capacity of at least 60,000MW.
This, he said, would be in addition to available capacity of at least 40,000MW in the immediate future with a solid arrangement to double the generation and available capacities before 2035.
The national energy challenge, according to Odia, has, however, not gone beyond redemption but requires that certain steps be taken with precision.
He advised the Federal Government (FG) to consider the repeal of the privatisation of the distribution sector and the introduction of prepaid metering systems to be monitored through remote modular connectivity.
The privatisation exercise, he said, was inimical to rural development.
“Decentralise transmission by carving the nation into between 6 and 10 units and loop the units with gear switches to reduce the very rampant outages due to system failure and invest massively in generation among other things,” he said.
By Usman Aliyu
The Centre for Climate Change and Development (CCCD) at Alex Ekwueme Federal University, in collaboration with the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, DC, is holding an online event to present the key messages emanating from recent national research on the implications of the oil and gas transition on the Nigerian economy.
Nigeria has launched its Energy Transition Plan (ETP) and has also committed to achieving net zero carbon economy by 2060. Like many countries that are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, there is an understanding that a shift away from fossil fuels is a requirement. However, being one of the largest oil-producing countries in Africa and a major exporter of crude oil, the shift may not be an easy proposition.
Given the heavy reliance on fossil fuel income, where oil represents up to 10 percent of GDP and accounts for more than 80 percent of Nigeria’s total exports, the shift could cause significant revenue losses for various levels of government, with strong implications for the government’s ability to spend on social services and infrastructure, as well as cater for those employed in the public sector. This potential loss of government revenue could have a multiplier effect on the entire economy. Effective planning and implementation of the transition would be required to ensure that it is just, equitable, and economically viable.
The Centre for Climate Change and Development, in collaboration with WRI, has undertaken this national research project with the main objective of assessing the impact of the transition away from the oil and gas sector on government revenues, workers supported by the oil and gas industry, and the overall impact on the economy. The project yielded very interesting results and policy recommendations.
Some of the questions explored include:
In the pre-event press conference, the Director of CCCD, Prof. Chukwumerije Okereke, stated that the research was conducted with high-calibre international organisations with several decades of experience, and it yielded interesting insights and policy recommendations that can support Nigeria in navigating the path towards sustainability.
Distinguished guests expected at the event include the WRI’s International Climate Initiative, David Waskow; Director General of the National Council on Climate Change, Dr. Salisu Dahiru; Solomon Bulus Maren, National Coordinator of the African Parliamentary Network on Climate Action; and Sam Onuigbo, a member of the Governing Board and Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change of the North East Development Commission, will be guests of honour at the event.
The event is also intended to present the results of national research done on the subject, using models and scenarios to analyse the impact of the oil and gas transition on the economy of Nigeria. The online event is scheduled to take place on Thursday, March 21, 2024, at 2:00 PM (WAT).
