Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
Stakeholders in the Nigerian renewable energy subsector yesterday moved to harmonise the divergent policies in the ministries, departments and parastatals of government in view of the renewed discussions on the impending transition to cleaner fuels.
Speaking during the opening of a three-day workshop tagged: “Review and Harmonisation of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policies of Nigeria”, in Abuja, Chairman, Steering Committee of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Associations (REEEA) Alliance, Dr. Immamudeen Talba, explained that there’s currently a mismatch in the subsector.
Some other participants who spoke at the event included the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the organisation, Prof Abubakar Sambo and Director, Energy Management Department, Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), Sulu Ibrahim as well as representatives of various ministries and agencies.
Talba added that Nigeria needed to properly coordinate its laws and policies, especially as Cop 27, scheduled to hold in Egypt later this year draws closer.
“We have convened this workshop to identify areas of complaints and mismatch within all the statutory policies or regulatory frameworks that we have in Nigeria, particularly all the instruments related to energy and climate change,” he noted.
He added that a pre-meeting conference meeting was held two weeks ago, against the backdrop of Nigeria’s commitment to climate change, especially submissions of the cop 26 and towards the goals concerning access to electricity.
The energy expert stressed that the climate change Act, the energy transition policy, the Nigerian energy efficiency policy, the national renewable energy policy and other instruments should be properly synergised.
“We want to harmonise all these commitments and come up with a framework and we want to see a situation where Nigeria goes back to the Cop 27 coming up in Egypt, with a presentation on what it has achieved vis-à-vis the commitments,” he noted.
He explained that since the policies are driven by different agencies, there has been no synergy, with a lot of uncoordinated approach.
“If you’re looking for data you can hardly see the data because there’s nobody to harmonise,” he added.
While calling for collaboration, he added that with the support from foreign institutions there was need for accountability, especially with the ministries which are acting individually currently.
“At the end of the day, there will be no delivery because there’s no target or goals. You see that nothing has been achieved but money has been spent. That’s why the alliance decided that there’s the need to carry every body along,” he pointed out.
With the power ministry, environment ministry as well as finance and several other agencies of government in attendance, Talba explained that areas of conflicts will be ironed out before the report will be forwarded to the federal government.
In his presentation, Ibrahim explained that climate change is already biting hard globally, with rivers drying, ice melting, forests burning, livestock starving while humans and animals are migrating.
To checkmate or reverse the process, he opined that there was the need for a good policy and adequate policy structure which will create confidence and reduce bias in operations.
