How Nigerian farmers can mitigate fuel crisis – Prof Bugaje

In the past, Nigerian farmers were encouraged to grow Jathropa with the hope that the plant would be used in the production of biofuels, is that project still ongoing?We had a conference on the technology of biodiesel in Nigeria recently. We invited some international professors from India. We also invited all stakeholders in Nigeria, including […]

In the past, Nigerian farmers were encouraged to grow Jathropa with the hope that the plant would be used in the production of biofuels, is that project still ongoing?
We had a conference on the technology of biodiesel in Nigeria recently. We invited some international professors from India. We also invited all stakeholders in Nigeria, including researchers, farmers, entrepreneurs, policy makers from states, federal government and regulatory agencies, especially Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON). I think it was a good opportunity for all stakeholders to rob minds; I think it was a good opportunity on how to move the biodiesel agenda in Nigeria forward. The workshop also afforded all participants the opportunity to be trained on the technology itself. We had a number of lectures and laboratory practical sessions. Some people have never seen biodiesel; they are only hearing about it. Some people have never seen the equipment used to produce it, as well as the equipment used for the analysis. So, we were able to expose them to all of that. At the end of the day, we sat to discuss how to move the biodiesel agenda forward. We are hoping that both government and private sector would come in to reposition the biodiesel sector in Nigeria.
Are you saying that Jathropa production by our farmers for production of biodiesel is no more viable?
In 2005 during the Obasanjo regime, they came up with a policy framework on ethanol and biodiesel. The focus at that time was to use Jathropacarcus to produce biodiesel and bioethanol from sugarcane.
Unfortunately, none of them took up as ventures in the country. All we heard was that a division was created in the NNPC and it was called renewable energy division. But the division was not able to precipitate industries. They were only interested in the importation of bioethanol and biodiesel from overseas and blinding it, because the government has given approval for up to 20 per cent. We have reviewed that position, that Jathropa may not be the best raw material for production of biodiesel. There is need to look for other indigenous plants and species available in Nigeria as well micro allergy, which research has shown that it has about 20 times potential per hectare than Jathropa in terms of oil. Second, government needs to come up with a clear policy on biofuels. When that is done, there is need to identify the stakeholders that would implement it. As far as technology is concerned, the National Research Institute for Chemical Technology can play a major role, but there should be a very clear role for the private sector. This is because the biofuel industry has to be grown by the private sector.
A lot of farmers in Nigeria have planted hundreds of Jathropa hectares but they don’t have anywhere to sell the seeds. Many of them are now frustrated; they don’t know what to do. Actually, the choice of Jathropa is even faulty right from the onset. The same thing happened in Tanzania. They had over 600,000 hectares of Jathropa, but virtually all the 30 companies that have started the production have abandoned the project. Tanzania is now using Jathropa oil for soap production, cooking oil and other uses. This is why we need to review the whole policy where government would provide the conducive environment and allow the private sector to drive the sector.
In these researches on new fuels, do farmers still have any role to play?
Farmers are a very important part of the value chain. They are the ones who produce the seeds. The industries would buy the seeds, extract the oil and convert it into biodiesel. The same thing with the ethanol; if you are using sugarcane, you have to involve the farmers. The mistake that the government made was that when they were introducing the biofuel policy, they did not look into the total value chain. All the stakeholders should have been taken on board. So, farmers were just sensitised to grow Jathropa, but there were no plans for the industries to buy the seeds. There were no plans to process the seeds to convert them into biofuels and use parts of the plants for other uses like medicine. So, the complete value chain was not considered, and this is why we have hundreds of Jathropa farmers scattered all over the country. Some of them are prominent politicians. Therefore, we need to review the biofuel policy. Jathropa should not be the only source; we need to look for other sources.
In line with this, there was one petroleum training institute in Efurum, Warri, not far away from the refinery. Therefore, after Kaduna refinery was established, the federal government decided to build another petroleum training institute in Kaduna. Even after that, it was not implemented until Yar’adua became the president. Yar’adua started the building of the institute in Kaduna. The one in Efurum was upgraded to a University of Petroleum Resources, but the building of the one in Kaduna is even not completed. Weeds are now all over the place at a point when almost all the civil engineering works were almost completed. So, there is need to complete the institute. Not only that, there is need to expand the mandate of the institute to include biofuel technology, because biofuel is basically a northern product, as it is an agricultural product. Biofuel is the fuel for the future, and in return our farmers would be better for it because what they would be producing would have the required market. The advantage of having that institute to include biofuel is if we want to grow the biofuel technology locally, we must produce the manpower to operate and maintain the plants. Our farmers cannot produce Jathropa or whatever if the market and the technology to convert the plants to oil are not there. Presently, ordinary welding in the oil and gas, 90 per cent of the welders are Indonesians and other Asians. This is because the high level of skill required in such welding, especially where pipelines are involved, require specialised training.
The Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF) recently sent some people to South Africa to train on this specialised area, some of them couldn’t fit and jumped to other areas. So, there is need to bring those training programmes into the petroleum training institutes. Our polytechnics are not properly equipped for those trainings. Some of those welding are even done under the sea. If you are sending gas from Port Harcourt to Ghana, you can use the Atlantic Ocean. So, these are specialised trainings that only the petroleum institute can provide. So, there is need to complete the one in Kaduna and to bring in the necessary technologies and equipment needed for the training of not only welders but other processing equipment, instrumentation, and other trainings that would enhance the output of our farmers and the oil sector generally. If we had developed the Kaduna training institute, maintenance of Kaduna refinery would have been done by Nigerians. We wouldn’t need to be advertising every two years for a foreign company to be coming to maintain our refinery. The PTI in Kaduna should have trained the right manpower that should be able to maintain the refinery.
President Buhari’s agenda of refining the Nigerian crude within the borders of Nigeria cannot be sustained, if the manpower required to achieve that is not properly trained. Therefore, the PTI, Kaduna should be an integral part of the president’s agenda. The institute needs to be completed, the equipment and trainers sourced even if it is from overseas to start training Nigerians so that in the future all our refineries should be maintained by Nigerians.
However, in a situation where this year we got zero capital funding from government, it means the government is telling all researchers to close shop and go home. Without funding, there is nothing researchers can do. We have, in NARICT, over 200 researchers, many of them with Ph.D and masters and if you did not engage their brains in research activities, they would leave and go to universities. I hope government would review the situation that research institutes are in. We are severely underfunded. I wonder how we can develop all these technologies at zero capital budget. I hope the new government would do something to improve the status of research, which would assist not only our farmers but all other sectors that have relevance to our economic growth.