‘We must ensure foreign loans drive jobs for Nigerians, not foreigners’

The federal government has stated that there is a need to ensure foreign loans secured for the power sector are used to provide jobs for Nigerians and not to import products that will enrich foreign countries. Speaking on the side-lines of the Nigeria Renewable Energy Innovation Forum (NREIF), Adedayo Olowoniyi, the Chief Technical Assistant (CTA) […]

The federal government has stated that there is a need to ensure foreign loans secured for the power sector are used to provide jobs for Nigerians and not to import products that will enrich foreign countries.

Speaking on the side-lines of the Nigeria Renewable Energy Innovation Forum (NREIF), Adedayo Olowoniyi, the Chief Technical Assistant (CTA) to the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said Nigeria can’t produce energy for Nigerians that they cannot afford when they don’t have jobs.

The event was organised by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) to seek investments into local production of solar energy products in Nigeria.

Olowoniyi said it is very critical that when the government funds a subsidy programme, it should drive access, and the procurement of the assets should be used in a way that will benefit the value chain to local production.

“One thing we must not do is to use the foreign loans to further develop other people’s countries. It’s not logical. So we must do things in a very logical way and need to have the right competitive advantage. I am not saying we must produce everything. But the energy produce must drive industrialisation. The capital that the government is bringing in must drive jobs, and that must drive economic development.”

While stressing that the provision of energy should be linked to industrialisation, he said not industrialising and providing jobs to Nigerians will not lead to the growth of the sector.

“People just don’t consume energy because they want to consume energy. They consume additional energy because of economic capacity. So we must ensure that through this process of energising Nigeria, we must provide jobs, we must increase the income of our people so that they can actually capitalise on the provision of energy. So, from the Ministry of Power, our focus has been that we need to localise. Nigeria’s first policy is great.

“You look at India. You look at a lot of markets that have also provided access to their people. They’ve actually done it by their local industry. You look at China. They are producing a lot of what they use for their construction. So we have to move away gradually from importation. Of course, we need to have the right economies of scale.”

On his part, the CEO of InfraCorp said there is a lack of equity in funding for local investors, adding that the inability to access funding in local currency portends danger as funding through foreign currency is not sustainable.

“So in essence, what Infracorp is really focused on trying to do across the different infrastructure verticals, not just the energy one is to create a market support for sustainable investments in the infrastructure space.”

The Speaker of House of Representative, Tajuddeen Abbas, said the house has done a lot on local content, manufacturing and access to finance for renewable energy equity funds, credit guarantees and consensual financing for manufacturers to have access to funds and ability to pay for a long period of time.

He added that renewable energy courses will be integrated into the universities and polytechnic.