Our inability to fix power costing us dearly – Ex-power minister, Nnaji

Former Minister of Power, Professor Barth Nnaji has said it is unfortunate that Nigeria has continued to struggle with its power sector, noting that the challenge is costing the country dearly.

The former minister who spoke at the Nigeria LNG and Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Business Interactive Session in Victoria Island, Lagos on Wednesday, noted that Nigeria at some point aspired to equal Brazil’s power generation capacity due to similarity in population, but the South American nation has since moved far ahead.

“Talking about the Nigerian power sector, a lot has been said about what we don’t have and what we should have. The country I really like to use to compare is Brazil because of the comparable population,” Nnaji said.

“We aspired at one time to be like them. Today, they have more than 130,000 installed capacity and we we have 12,000. Of this, we have 7,000 available. We have transmission capacity of 5000, which means that no matter what, it is 5000 that we can transmit. It’s a very big challenge.”

Nnaji, however, noted that solving the power sector problem is not rocket science, as according to him, it can be done if there is the will, even as he pointed out that renewable energy remained the future.

“It’s not rocket science. We can actually solve the problem. But we need to have the will, we need to have people who can think through the problem to begin to solve it.

“Statistics from LCCI is that, for some industries, nearly 40 percent of the cost of production is energy. And that’s because in Nigeria, we do self production of electricity. But if you are able to use industrial power it can go to less than a quarter of that. That’s where our products can begin to compete with the world. Our products really can’t compete in the world market unless we can produce electricity reliably, that’s an issue.”

He said Nigeria must embrace alternative energy sources, as according to him, the country holds an advantage of not being bogged down by investment in fossil fuel.

“It quite profound when you think about the fact that in the not distant future, a lot of countries would be riding in cars that is totally electricity driven.

“We can leapfrog. We don’t have to go through the problems that others have encountered. We can take the product as it is and go forward. But it requires that we agree that the will should be there. This also requires that there is the willingness to put the resources together.

“It is bad that universities are not supported in basic science. Can you imagine that one university, the California Institute of Technology is the host of Jet Propulsion Laboratory that gets billions of dollars in research every year?” he asked.

“You talk about the fact that if you invest in science and technology, the amount of investment is how you measure the nation’s development. And the amount of energy the nation consumes is what you you measure the GDP of the nation. Let me say that it is clear that there would be more need for energy, more need for electricity, it can only go up.

“So if we have the ability to make use of renewable energy, which is where the world is going, and be able to store renewable energy, then we will be in play because the fossil fuel driven energy is going to gradually fade.

“Natural gas energy will be here for a while, but the energy mix of Nigeria must come. And it will come if we have a better way to store it.”