FG’s stoves and wonder bags contract

The so-called wonder bag is actually simple low-tech equipment produced in South Africa to keep cooking pots warm during power outages.  The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr Nurudeen Muhammed, who currently oversees the Federal Ministry for Information, told State House correspondents after the FEC meeting that the contract was for the procurement of […]

The so-called wonder bag is actually simple low-tech equipment produced in South Africa to keep cooking pots warm during power outages.  The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr Nurudeen Muhammed, who currently oversees the Federal Ministry for Information, told State House correspondents after the FEC meeting that the contract was for the procurement of 750,000 units of the ‘clean stoves’ and 18,000 ‘wonder bags’ under a National Clean Cooking Scheme.
 The concept of promoting cleaner cooking methods that safeguard the personal health of the users and at the same time promote a clean environment is a good one worthy of actualisation. Indeed, even the limited objectives of this scheme to engender a clean cooking culture among rural women to reduce and possibly eliminate cooking with coal, coke or firewood are positive. However this particular FEC initiative has been greeted with widespread derision, which in fact it deserves.  
Beside, as with most government schemes, this particular project’s implementation is fraught with uneconomic steps.  Criticism of the new initiative is on several grounds. First, the money could have been used to establish a factory in the country to produce these items, with all the value added advantages, rather than importing them CKD and assembling them locally, further depleting the dollar reserves at this critical time. The scheme is expected to provide 20 million clean stoves over a five-year period at the rate of four million stoves per year, to be distributed free of charge. The administration that is planning to introduce austerity measures, is hiking the cost of practically every government service, including electricity, to maximise revenue, and remove subsidy on petrol, has paradoxically turned itself into a welfare organ.  If the government’s motive is to use the scheme as a political tool to garner votes for the ruling party candidates in next year’s general elections, implicit the cynicism of its officials regarding voter behaviour is appalling.
The claim that the scheme would provide jobs in assembly plants in Nigeria is not borne out by our experience in the assembly of other products, like cars and trucks.  The promotion of local assembly rather than local production can only be harmful and detrimental to the economy in the long run. Second is the issue of the costs.  The opacity of the project’s concept can be gauged from the statement of officials of the Ministry of Environment claiming that the unit cost of the stoves and wonder bags were not “readily available”, but that the products would be “subsidized” and given out free. This absence of accountability, a growing trend in the conduct of this government’s business, means that not much more will be heard of the project and its implementation. Is the government for instance waiving duty and providing other privileges to the importers of the products? Third is the matter of determining who a “rural woman” is. Many programmes designed to benefit the so-called rural woman in the past have turned out to be ruses to siphon public money and enrich cronies of the initiators. The public shows of handing over of “empowerment” equipment to rural women have so far done little to uplift their general status and wellbeing.  If the stoves are more economical and environmentally friendly, the rural women wpage ill purchase them with their resources and thus be committed to maintaining them. There is definitely a need for government to address issues of deforestation and clean environment. However the large reserves of natural gas that are flared rather than harnessed for clean cooking purposes is one vital area to focus on in the effort to address both. Electricity is the perhaps cleanest form of energy; but government is yet to seriously explore other sources like solar energy, or wind faming both of which are economically viable in the country but are yet to be fully tapped in any meaningful way. Resorting to kneejerk decisions to import products not manufactured locally can never be a solution to a long term problem.