Vision 2020: Nigeria must resolve electricity crisis – Expert

Except Nigeria resolves its perennial power crisis, the vision to make the nation one of the 20 largest economies by 2020 will remain a huge pipe dream, an industry expert has said.

A principal partner at Africonomie, Mr. Stanley Austin, said this in a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja on Friday.

Positing that energy crisis has increased the level of poverty in the country, Austin said all stakeholders must come together and create an enduring solution that would make the nation to realise Vision 2020.

According to him, one of the efforts in collective responsibility is the Nigerian Energy and Power Summit scheduled to hold in Abuja this week.

He said, ”The current power situation in Nigeria is very frustrating, because it has stagnated Nigeria‘s economic development, and constitutes a major setback in our quest to measure up with our peers such as Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia.

”It is not news any more that many companies have stopped production in Nigeria, because we lack steady power supply. Those that have not shut down completely have stopped production and joined the ”import club”.

”The cost of these industries shutting down is enormous, but we have not as a country taken count of the losses. With each factory that shuts down, job losses are immediate, and in Nigeria where each worker feeds several other dependents, the poverty index keeps rising. So do other socio-political problems.

”We can go on and on, but one thing we have to bear in mind is that, until we get a good grasp of the power problem, the talk about vision 20-2020 is a pipe dream.”

Austin said investors, financiers, and experts in energy and electricity need to take advantage of the renewed vigour of the Federal Government to solve the endemic energy crisis through private sector driven initiatives.

He said the Nigerian Energy and Power summit intends to leverage on the renewed vigour by the government to hands-off substantially from the power sector by providing an unparalleled opportunity to licensees, generation, transmission and distribution companies, foreign investors and international financial institutions to dialogue.

”If participation by the private sector had been encouraged earlier on, the competition associated with the sector would have revolutionised the industry,” Austin added.
Source:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201011211104257