NIGERIA AND WASTED OPPORTUNITIES: FACTS, PAINS AND THOUGHTS
1. Ranking Nigerian states according to surface area, the first successive 13 are all northern states. These 13 northern states have a cumulative surface area of 584,235 sq.km (km2). This surface area is almost twice the surface area of Germany (~300,000 sq.km), Japan (~377,000 sq.km) and Italy (~301,000 sq.km).
2. Following the massive abundance of land, most northerners and their leaders believe that the region’s economic grace should come from agriculture.This is a shallow thought.
3. In each of the 13 northern states aforementioned, the sun shines averagely for 9 hours daily in about 10 months of the year. This is more than Japan cities’ sunshine duration (average 5 hours of daily sunshine), or German cities (average 7 hours of daily sunshine).
4. The world’s demand for energy is rising exponentially. Developed countries are on transit to provide clean or renewable energy to reduce carbon content which has global warming concerns. This gave birth to harnessing energy from the sun as solar power to both supplement and complement consumption-based global energy generation.
5. Solar energy requires two things basically; a lot of open fields, and direct sunlight during the sun peak hours. 13 northern states have both two prerequisites more than the whole of Germany, Italy and Japan as individual countries.
6. For quite sometime now, Germany, Italy and Japan have attained sufficient energy generation for their consumption and have exceeded to export electricity. Germany alone has electricity export of 2 Billion Euros. How about the 13 northern states of Nigeria who have the potentials more than germany? THEY ARE STILL IMPORTING CHEAP CHINESE GASOLINE GENERATORS!!!!
7. Through solar energy alone, Germany generates 38,000 Megawatts, Japan generates 23,000 Megawatts and Italy generates 18,000 Megawatts. Nigeria as a country with better potentials generates a meager 6,000 Megawatts from Coal and Hydroelectric Power (HEP).
8. Unaware of the wasted opportunities, when Nigeria achieved this 6,000 MW in April, the Minister of Power, TCN and other Nigerians all said “electricity has improved in Nigeria”.
9. There is currently no serious plans by Nigeria to harness the benefits of the divine gift of open fields and peak sun hours in the north. The leaders are more concerned about oil exploration in the north while the world is thinking of renewable energy.
10. The world will keep moving and no one will wait for Nigerians to finish thinking of creating a “One Nigeria” or baptizing El-Caleel to be politically correct as a “De-tribilized Nigerian”.
11. There is another thing the north can do with their land apart from agriculture and solar energy. Wind energy is another opportunity area. Let’s discuss that later.
