Olawepo-Hashim: Nigeria Should Target 160,000MW of Electricity in 10 Years
An energy expert, Mr. Ggenga Olawepo-Hashim has called on the federal government to target electricity generating capacity of 160,000 megawatts in the next 10 years so that Nigeria can be at per with South Africa’s per capital generation. Olawepo-Hashim, who is also a presidential aspirant and former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), also urged the federal government to eliminate current inefficiency in electricity distribution and establish a fair and consumer friendly electricity tariff that will as well be cost recoverable to attract an estimated $ 200 billion investments from both private and public sectors for the next 10 years.
In a paper titled “Agenda for All Round National Development,” which he delivered at a recent public lecture organised by the College of Postgraduate Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, Olawepo-Hashim argued that building an industrialised and modern economy would be impossible without simultaneously directing national energy to rapidly increasing electricity generation, distribution and transmission.
According to him, the current national electricity generation capacity of about 6,000 megawatts is too little a capacity for any meaningful development compared to South African’s generation capacity of more than 40,000 megawatts capacity.
He suggested that in order to direct available finance in the country for key task of industrialisation; the country must prioritise available finance for modernising the country’s infrastructure.
“The trend in which 80 per cent of revenue in the nation’s budget has been disproportionately consistently applied to recurrent expenditure; whilst capital expenditure takes the back seat at 20 per cent must be discounted. To begin with, it must be the goal of public finance to allocate 50 per cent of revenue to capital expenditure,” he said.
He also recommended a complete change in the budgeting system from the current envelope system where annual budget are merely a repeat of previous year sectorial allocation with variations, accounting for inflation. “Budgeting must become NEEDS-BASED, driven by national economic priority, based on a new plan to build modern infrastructure, make the needed social investment for the country and industrialise Nigeria,” he added.
He also argued that another element of financial reform that Nigeria needs to undertake is to ensure banking and financial sectors make capital available to the real sector of the economy.