Insufficient electricity power to drive and boost the Nigerian economy has been described as a crime against Nigerians, by the government, a presidential aspirant on the platform of the Young Democratic Party, Malik Ado-Ibrahim has stated.
Ado-Ibrahim in a parley with journalists in Abuja said the deployment of an energy mix would enhance security in the country, especially the Northeast which has public electricity infrastructure destroyed due to insecurity.
He said modern economies are powered by electricity which galvanises the industries and health, education sector and security as research are sustained by electricity.
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According to him, “Our power system, 4,000 megawatts, cannot sustain us. Las Vegas has over 60,000 megawatts. And that’s a city, Nigeria has 4,000 megawatts. That for me is a crime, our roads and infrastructure is horrible.
“We need to be able to go back and understand that, whether you want the industry to work, you have to have four basic things in my opinion to bring Nigeria back to Greatness.
“It is probably an ambitious project but a project that I believe can help Nigeria grow and really be a vision for Africa.
“And my intention is to build 20,000 megawatts of solar power in the north of this country and use that to be able to push power down the grid instead of only from the oil-rich states and the refineries and pushing it up. This power in the north we are just not tapping into.
“None of these needs would make us go to buy expensive turbines and gas pipelines on the spot. We build solar and we put renewable energy in the ground.
“We don’t have to import these things from China. We can ask this industry to do this and I am not just talking again,” the aspirant stated.
He pointed out that Nigeria has the capacity, intellect, and abilities to make this happen locally.
“I wanted to show that we can do this. If we have a can-do government if we have a president with vision. Then the country has something to look forward to.
“So the energy mix needs to be different. We need to look at renewables. We need to take the sun that we are all running away from, harness it, and create jobs and the multiplier effect of creating jobs because electricity is more jobs and the more industry is growing.
“Without that our security is imperfect but the other beautiful thing about renewables is that you can take the power and put it where it’s needed.”
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