The Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Mrs Olu Verheijen, on Tuesday in Abuja said the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu just secured an investment worth $600 million for the Nigeria in the gas sector despite the negative press that initially trailed the deal.
She spoke while briefing the All Progressives Forum (APC) Professional Forum Board of Trustees led by the former governor of Bauchi state, Isah Yuguda, about the policy reforms and implementation of the president in energy, oil and gas.
According to her, this was made possible based solely on the directive of the president for the economic team to do all it can to unlock more gas investment into the sector.
“We are more in gas province than oil because we are the 10th largest reservoir of gas globally,” she said.
To that extent, she said part of the ongoing reforms in the sector which had not been widely reported is the drive to ensure that 76 percent of Nigeria’s gas reserves gets developed with a sense of urgency, saying so far, the country is on a better trajectory towards realising the objective.
“We have shown clearly that we have demonstrated evidence of investment coming into Nigeria based on the reforms that His Excellency, President Tinubu has unveiled. Some of the hurdles on the way of investment have been removed. Some of them are in the way we are removing bottlenecks on the way we execute projects.
“This is to translate into CNG infrastructure, LPG infrastructure for more Nigerians to cook food with LPG rather than combustible energy that are detrimental both to our health and the environmen,” she said.
On the oil sector, she said aside other initiatives, there are reforms about the need to look at the pipeline projects which are on the long, medium and short term basis.
“This is because our ability to earn foreign exchange depends on oil; more so as it generates 90 percent of our earnings currently. Besides, our ability to stabilise our currency and tame inflation is directly related to our ability to grow production in the oil sub sector,” she said.
On power, the special adviser noted that it would be impossible to power the level of development envisaged for the country without a systematic upgrade of electrification.
“To complement all the efforts in renewable energy, we identified that the financial liquidity of the distribution segment is key. Therefore we want to deplore the technology that allows us to generate more revenue and ensure that estimated billings are in consonance with the services rendered. We want to channel subsidy directly to the people who actually need energy by keeping it affordable,” she said.
Leader of the forum, Yuguda said as a professional group in the party, they are duty-bound to know what is happening to government reform programmes so they can inform Nigerians.
“From what we have heard from the special adviser, it is a departure from what used to be. This is unlike in the past that policy makers would come out, make statements without implementation. Asiwaju’s government is that of seeing things and deliver on the table. What Nigeria needs is what he is doing for us today and this is the only time we are getting it right,” he said.