Stories by Patrick Andrew
with agencies
The federal government’s quest to increase power generation, transmission and distribution will remain a mirage, according to an environmental expert, Owa Olumayowa Raymond, who is also the Managing Partner of Prigem Concepts Limited.
According to him, the government’s failure to allocate a dime for renewable energy in the 2017 budget both demonstrated a lack of political will and the vision to meet the electricity needs of Nigerians.
“Despite the hard-work of all well-meaning Environmentalist from across the globe, clamouring for environmental preservation, and protection not a single renewable energy source was included or identified by and captured in allocation to the Federal Ministries of Power, Works and Housing, Environment, the Presidency, Energy commission and several energy research institutes,” he said stressing that it represented serious flaw in the budget.
“The Federal Ministry of Finance gets a total of N1,852,822,328,965 out of which the headquarters alone is scheduled to spend N152 million on generating sets, repairs, fuelling and maintenance.
“The budget proposal 2017 although devoid of the supposed yearly inputs (padding), the maintenance, repairs, and fuelling of the generating sets across the MDAs only leaves us wondering how it could have been drawn without any allocation for renewable energy especially since the nation spent over a trillion naira on the above items last year.”
Mr Raymond regretted that renewable energy in spite of being environmental friendly, cheaper and efficient, the federal government did consider it necessary to make provision for it.
He wondered why the government that claims to be working assiduously to step up electricity generation and distribution failed to give priority to such sources of cheap power like inverters, solar panels, wind mills, WTE, bio-mass etc.
The Managing Partner noted that the cost of conventional energy and pressure on the imported refined products and Foreign exchange should have impel on the government focus on sources of renewable energy and maximise the advantage therein.
Therefore, he urged the government to its steps and tap from the many solar power projects (streetlights, pumping machines etc. ) that have been undertaken in the last six years and ensure that Nigerians benefit from the well over N2 bn worth of renewable energy construction and training across the six geo-political zones.
