Chief Olusegun Obasanjo,
who, spoke at a high-level session on “Africa’s, Energy: What’s the New Deal?”,
at the ongoing 2016 annual meetings of African Development Bank (AfDB) in
Lusaka, lamented that rather than building power plants for Nigerians to
benefit, the IOCs preferred to burn the gas because such projects didn’t add to
their profitability.
The former President, Cheif
Olusegun Obasanjo, revealed that the refusal of international oil companies
(IOCS) to convert gas to power contributed to the deteriorated state of
electricity in the country.
According to him, “When I
was president, I asked all the international oil companies producing crude oil
in Nigeria not to burn gas and use it for electricity, only Agip responded and
build a power plant of only three megawatts, the others ignored my call.”
Obasanjo stressed that
going by resources and the potential that Africa has to generate power, there
was no reason why the continent should be in darkness.
He argued that African
governments should not deprive their citizens the benefit of electricity power
in a bid to have an environment devoid of pollution due to power generation.
“I’m an environmentalist, I will not keep environment clean at the expense of
power in Africa. Without coal, industrialisation would not have been possible
in Europe and other developed world. We may not use coal like in the past, but
let use a mixture of what we have We have coal, gas, oil, sun, wind, fossil;
let use them to get what we want,” he added.
AfDB President, Akinwunmi
Adesina, noted that Africa has no business not having power because all the
potential in all aspects of power generation. What needed to be, he added, was
to exploit the potentials inherent on the continent, pointing out that there
was a new deal on energy for Africa to add 160 gigawatts of electricity to the
system.
Meanwhile, earlier at the
meetings, the African Risk Capacity (ARC) took major steps towards its goal of
providing $2 billion worth of annual climate disaster coverage to Africa’s most
vulnerable populations.
ARC signed a Letter of
Intent and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with AfDB and the Conférence
Inter-Africaine des Marchés d’Assurance (CIMA) respectively yesterday after a
high-level panel at the AfDB’s Annual Meeting.
The Letter of Intent
between ARC and the AfDB marked an announcement of their intention to
collaborate in the areas of planning, preparation and response to extreme
weather events and natural disasters for the benefit of the Regional Member
Countries of the AfDB (RMCs).
The collaboration is
expected to play a pivotal role in protecting investments for economic growth
especially in key economic areas vulnerable to weather shocks such as
agriculture. The Letter of Intent will support the introduction and
mainstreaming of disaster risk financing into national fiscal policy in Member
States.
ARC was established by
Treaty in 2012 as a Specialised Agency of the African Union (AU). ARC was set
up to help Member States improve their capacities to better plan, prepare and
respond to extreme weather events and natural disasters, therefore protecting
the food security of their vulnerable populations.
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