Success Nwogu 
A former President of the Nigerian Meteorological Society (NmetS), Prof. Clement Akoshile, has urged the Federal Government and benefiting companies of the Universal Energy Facility to boost economic development in Nigeria.
He noted that the UEF, which is a multi-donor results-based finance (RBF) facility established to significantly speed up and scale up energy access across sub-Saharan Africa, in line with SDG7 and the Paris agreement, would be of tremendous benefit to Nigeria if well utilised.
According to him, the UEF, which provides incentive payments to eligible organisations deploying energy solutions and providing verified end-user electricity connections (including mini-grids and stand-alone solar systems) and clean cooking solutions based on pre-determined standards, will boost businesses, including small and medium enterprises in Nigeria, create jobs, as well as alleviate the poverty of the masses.
He noted that the UEF, which was launched in 2020, focused on mini-grid deployment in Benin, Madagascar and Sierra Leone and that in 2022, as part of the scale-up of the UEF, the mini-grids window was being expanded to additional countries and a new funding window on stand-alone solar for productive use (SSPU) has been developed.
He called for prudent use of Nigeria’s share of the facility, which aspires to be a $500 million programme, delivering approximately 1.3 million electricity connections and 300,000 clean cooking solutions, while reducing 4.8 MtCO2e of carbon emissions by 2023. He lamented that many offers had been made to Nigeria, which would have benefitted the country immensely but did not materialise because of undue demands and other challenges from Nigerians.
Akoshile, who is also a former Director, the Renewable Energy Centre, the University of Ilorin, said the facility would help upscale energy availability, especially renewable energy and noted that the prospective beneficiaries in Nigeria were.Darway Coast:, Ashipa Electric; Solad, Cloud Energy Limited; Sunfi, Creeds Energy Limited, Haverhill Synergy Limited, Konexa Energy, Oolu Nigeria and Pam Africa.
Akoshiole said: “FG and benefit companies should optimise the benefit of the fund for the people and not to increase their woes because if they increase their wealth, they will move from one city to another city and become more billionaires and millionaires rather than it benefiting the common people. And more Nigerians rather will be going out of the country.
“The fund is such that people can key into it and turn it to the industrial sector, then before you know it, more people will move away from the poverty level to the middle class and more middle class can then go up. But where they just take the money and share it, it is not good.
“The facility has the capacity of creating many jobs and boosting economic development as well as addressing climate hazards. “It is a good idea if it benefits the people.
But there is always the Nigerian factor. “If they pump in the money and it is not monitored well by those who are supposed to monitor it, it will not benefit us. “Once it is a good thing that is coming, we should gladly with open hands receive it but many of the good things sent to us by the developed countries, the donors also have attachments to them.
Many times, they also want their benefit and of course, we are the ones that should have the significant benefit of what is coming in. “So it is not really a free innocent enterprise. It has plus and it has minus to is. It is supposed to be beneficial to both parties. When they send it to us, they also tend to benefit economically, socially, friendship and bow you relate to them at international level.
“But other than that, we, the receivers should also consider our side of it. When these energies are supposed to come to Nigeria, there are Nigerians or Nigerian conglomerates that are willing to take both lion and blood share which will not be totally benefitial to the whole people. It is not for the government to do it so that the people will benefit, that is a very important component of it.
“There is a monster on the ground, the distribution companies in Nigeria (DisCos). They have their ears on the ground when such a thing is coming, their eyes will be on it so that they will maximise their profit. How the government will do it so that it will bring the cost down and not shoot it up is the thing that should, first of all, need to be addressed. “How will the energy be distributed?
Will the energy be such that it is only the companies that will get it, Is it the industrialised cities that will get it or will it reach the rural areas? Do not forget that the energy they will collect is not only going to be in the city, but it is also going to be all over the area.
And if they are taking it from the area, it is the people that should benefit from it and not just the powerful energy company. They should work their relationship so that the energy companies will not hook it and raise the tariff. If they can not benefit the people by lowering their tariff because of this fund and increasing supplies to the rural areas, then we are not gaining anything from it. It will just be like crude refining.
We produce oil raw, send it abroad, refine it and give us so that it is a loss to Nigeria than a benefit. They should find out how it will benefit the rural people.” He added: “Consider the energy need, cooking is one of them, lightning is one of them, education is one of them. Local industries that require little energy are the ones that need it. If they can not solve cooking for the rural people and they still need to be cutting firewood, then we are not benefiting from it.
