Why our summit was on issues confronting power sector In Oyo — JBC President

Following the success of this year’s socio-economic summit of the Jericho Businessmen Club, JBC, its president, Adegboyega Taofeek, has revealed that they deliberately centered it around resolving the issues confronting the power sector in Oyo State. This was just as the Ibadan-born senior chief said that that no economy can develop without sustainable and affordable […]

Following the success of this year’s socio-economic summit of the Jericho Businessmen Club, JBC, its president, Adegboyega Taofeek, has revealed that they deliberately centered it around resolving the issues confronting the power sector in Oyo State.

This was just as the Ibadan-born senior chief said that that no economy can develop without sustainable and affordable electricity.

Adegboyega who spoke while welcoming participants to the 2024 JBC summit, which is the second edition, explained that “with the passage and signing into law of the amended electricity act that now permits sub nationals to regulate electricity in their respective states, we believe that Nigeria as a country has taken a giant step forward in the quest to improve electricity availability for sustainable development.

“Therefore, what we are doing here today is providing a platform to proffer solutions to the myriads of problems militating against achieving sustainable electricity in Oyo State,” he noted.

Power minister, Adebayo Adelabu, said all stakeholders must come together to overcome the challenges hampering the success of the energy sector.

Themed “Powering Oyo State for Industrial and Economic Development”, Adelabu listed some of the challenges affecting energy security in Nigeria to include aging infrastructure, resource limitations, capacity inadequacy across the value chain, and predominantly the consistent vandalism experienced on the transmission networks across the country.

Speaking about strategies to surmount these challenges, the All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftain noted that all the issues of power in the country’s health and educational institutions will soon be a thing of the past as part of the renewed hope agenda of the current administration.

“I check my blood pressure every hour because I hardly sleep. Every two hours, I contact my people to ask: what has happened again. I’m always thinking of grid collapse. We are working actively to resolve these issues and ensure energy security. We are now working on a new super grid which will be a backup grid so that anytime there is an issue with the main grid, it can be powered on.”

He assured that resolving the problems confronting the power sector is critical to the country’s ongoing push for increased industrialization. “There’s no industrialized nation that does not have their backbone in affordable and reliable electricity. South Korea generates over 190,000 megawatts of power for its population of just over 40 million people and it’s not by chance that they are home to the same number of industrial Giants as that of other countries globally. It’s why the issue of power is critical to ensuring real growth and development in our country.

“By boosting our industrial capacity and enhancing the sustainability of the power sector in line with our mandate. Over the past year, we have adopted a multidimensional approach to achieve this to address the bottlenecks setting the sector back. For us to have a guaranteed electricity supply, we need an annual investment of $10 billion over the next 10 years but the government alone can’t do this. Our last total budget for all sectors was just $15 billion and a significant part of this goes to recurrent expenditure. So if power alone requires $10 billion, it means private sector investment is key and to achieve this we need to make industries attractive to both local and international investors.

“In this era of refusal to power electricity bills by customers and vandalization of infrastructure, how do we achieve this? We need to incentivise people to pay electricity bills. One of our biggest achievements last year was the enactment of the 2023 electricity act signed into law by the President which represents a major shift in our power sector and the state government has now been empowered to join the electricity market which is key to fostering innovation. If there was no such amendment in our act, we wouldn’t be here to discuss how to power Oyo state independently of the federal government. This law has helped achieve decentralization of the Electricity Act.

“Our state can go further to develop our renewable energy portfolio like solar power. For hydro electricity power, we can upgrade the capacity of the Ikere Gorge dam to as much as 20 megawatts. In the next month, we’ll have an approved concession of the Ikere Gorge dam which will then revamp it to close to 20 megawatts. We have the Asejire dam too, we’ll soon go into discussion with the Oyo State government to see what we can get from there,” he added.

Meanwhile, in his keynote speech, Adeoye Fadeyibi, an Expert Consultant Adviser to the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, noted that Oyo State’s goal of achieving energy efficiency is possible.

To achieve this, he noted that the state must prioritize capacity building and skills development as well as digital and smart solutions.

“Powering Oyo State adequately will support its industrialization goals, attract foreign investment, and create jobs, all of which will contribute to long-term economic development,” he noted.

Key players in attendance emphasized the significance of energy in the production value chain, commending government for efforts in reversing the setback.

Highpoint of the event was the presentation of a total of Five Million Naira to the top three finalists of the JBC Ibadan Youth Innovation Challenge.