Governor Abdullahi Criticizes Nigeria’s Power Generation Failures, Calls for Emphasis on Clean Energy and Mining
Governor Sule Abdullahi of Nasarawa State, has expressed dismay that Nigeria is still generating below 60,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity despite the ambitious plan to bring the country’s power generation to 50,000MW by 2020.
Speaking at the 32 Engineering Assembly organised by the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), the governor noted that the ambitious plan was part of the vision 20:2020 that was supposed to bring Nigeria to be among the twentieth richest country in the world.
He noted, “We know about the various power challenges in the country, in the year 2009 when the vision 20:2020 was formed, I was in the power committee, we were generating about 6,000MW of power, we made a commitment and say that either from hydro, gas turbines and other areas of power production, we were going to be producing 50,000MG of power by the year 2020 and we will be the 20th economy.”
Needless he lamented, today, Nigerians are 15 years later and are still generating less than 6000 we used to generate.
The governor stressed the need for the county to move from fossil fuel and embrace cleaner energy which Nigeria has in abundance.
Abdullahi suggested that the country should search inwardly to make mining a source of revenue, pointing out that Nasarawa is among four states contributing over N1bn to the federation account each.
The President of COREN, Engr Sadiq Abubaka, on his part, explained that it has developed a technique to investigate the issues making building collapse thrive in the country.
He said that for the first time in this country Nigerians are going to x-ray the sector that allows building collapse to thrive, adding that they have developed a technique that is very comprehensive and will allow them to track who is doing what at what point.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Musa Dangiwa, explained that the standards COREN sets and the professional ethics it enforces are critical to ensuring the quality, safety, and resilience of housing and infrastructure projects across the nation.
