Solar Energy: Nigerians Caution On 7,000 Megawatts Projection

Mixed reactions  have
trailed Federal Government’s projected generation of 7,000 megawatts of electricity from solar and renewable energy by 2020.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had in its presentation at the Nigeria Photovoltaic Energy Conference in Lagos announced the projected electricity generation.
Some residents of Abuja told our correspondent  that rather than spend resources in pursuing the new power sources, the government should concentrate on making existing energy sources functional.
A building contractor, Mr Aniele Ugochukwu, welcomed the idea, saying that if government could attain the projection, the populace would have no reason to rely heavily on generators for their power needs.
According to him, most countries have resorted to solar and renewable energy for their power supply.
“Countries, worldwide, have adopted solar and renewable sources of energy and Nigeria should tow same line,” he said.
Ugochukwu said that if government must achieve the target, it must immediately begin to put the required infrastructure in place.
He, however, expressed fear that inconsistency in government policies may jeopardise the ambition.
“Unless successive administrations continued with the idea of the previous ones, projects such as this will continue to be abandoned,” he said.
A civil servant, Mr Mathew Onje, who commended government on the planned project, said it was achievable if there would be the political will.
Onje said that there had been many laudable projects of  that nature that were abandoned because of lack of commitment.
“There is no task that is hard to accomplish if there is the will and commitment on the part of the initiator of such projects,” he said.
On her part, a shopkeeper, Alhaja Maimuna Haruna, said that government was engaging in too many projects when it could not solve the current power situation in the country.
She said that instead of announcing such projections, government should begin work on them before let out information on it to the public.
”I don’t think it is proper for government to begin to announce to the public a project it is yet to begin work on,” she said.
A theatre art practitioner Mallam Jibrin Ahmed,  said that if government would focus on the project it would go a long way in solving the lingering power problem in the country.
According to Ahmed, with the abundant sunlight in the country, sourcing electricity from solar will not be a difficult task if the right infrastructure were in place.
“I think the problem will not be the availability of sunlight but the materials that will be needed for the project to succeed,” he said.