Source: Daily Trust (Abuja)

by Sani Babadoko

(Abuja  July 3, 2006) Moved by the deteriorating power supply in the country, environmental damage by fossil foil and the mass rural and urban unemployment, the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN) has now initiated moves to popularize the exploitation of the numerous renewable energy sources available to the country.

The Energy Commission has always emphasized that Nigeria is well endowed with various energy resources including oil, gas, coal, tar sands, hydro solar, wind and biomass. Indeed the National Energy Policy approved by the Federal Government in 2003, promotes the achievement of an optimal energy supply mix, consisting of all the viable energy resources.

To give meaning to the policy the ECN has been making efforts to promote among others, the use of the nation's renewable energy potentials of solar, wind, hydro and biomass. The need to develop a viable alternative to firewood and kerosene is the reason for the ECN's initiative into the widespread use of renewable energy to solve the problem of energy scarcity in rural areas of the country.

The lack of such alternatives has not only put pressure on our forests, which is the source of fuel wood, but also promoted deforestation and the twin problems of desertification and soil erosion in different parts of the country. So acute is the desertification problem in the northern fringes bordering the Sahara desert, that in about 50 years from now some of the Nigerian settlements will be wiped out. Fortunately, according to the Energy Commission various renewable energy technologies have been developed at the two energy research centres at the Usumanu Dan Fodio University (UDU), Sokoto and the University of Nigeria (UN), Nsukka.

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