By David Agba
Abuja
Unless the requisite infrastructure are taken into consideration, the privatization of the power sector of the Nigerian economy is not a necessity, former president of the Nigeria Society of Engineers, Engr Mustafa Balarabe Shehu has contested.
Delivering the 26th October Lecture titled ‘Energy Situation in Africa – Opportunities and Challenges’, Shehu who ran the affairs of the NSE between 2012-2013, said: There seems to be ‘mad-rush’ for privatization of the power sector in many African countries without taking due consideration of the status of the power infrastructure in the country and some peculiarities of that very country.
“A good example is in Nigeria where the two of the three key segments of the sector; distribution and generation have been privatized. It should be noted that while privatization may be desirable under certain conditions, it is certainly not a necessity.
“Interestingly, the power sector in Egypt, South Africa and Mauritius that are shining examples of countries that meet up their energy demand are still public entities to a considerable extent. While it may be wrong to continue to blame any leadership for innocently or otherwise, taking a wrong decision at any point in time, the same leadership cannot escape from blame if it refuses to correct a decision that has obviously turned out to be wrong and not serving the people.”
He called on all African countries to take full advantage of available energy sources at the disposal to address the huge gap without too much consideration to the global energy policies.
Shehu cited the example of South Africa where he observed that 80% of the power is generated from coal while Nigeria with the highest energy deficit and abundance of coal deposit is not utilizing this resource to generate power.
“While most African countries have abundance of renewable energy sources like hydro, wind and solar, governments should not be embarking on power generation using such renewable sources without detailed and credible feasibility studies,” he advised.
