Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja
The Youth Wing of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has announced a N17.5 million grant for young professionals in Nigeria’s energy sector focusing on renewable energy and energy transition.
The National Youth Leader of APC, Dayo Israel, made the announcement on Monday in Abuja during the opening ceremony of the Dr. Mustapha Abdullahi Energy Leadership Fellowship (MAELF).
He said the grant was supported by both Dr. Mustapha Abdullahi and the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, for the fellows, among other opportunities.
Israel also pledged its commitment to supporting the renewable energy agenda of President Bola Tinubu to achieve the intended success needed for the socioeconomic transformation of the country.
The seven-day residential fellowship was aimed at developing young professionals in Nigeria’s energy sector transition policies, climate action, leadership and governance.
The youth leader admitted that poor energy generation and distribution was the major challenge affecting almost all sectors of the economy.
Israel stated: “We know that energy has been a major problem in Nigeria, and the President says that if he doesn’t fix Nigeria’s energy issues, we should hold him responsible.
“And as a party, we feel that we must support the president in achieving his energy vision. He’s invested a lot in renewable energy in Nigeria, in transforming the energy ecosystem, and all of that.
“So how do we help the president and support the president to fix the energy matter? Because energy is important for the president. It’s important for industrialisation. It’s important for the economy of Nigeria. Small businesses need energy.
“So that is why we created this Mustapha Abdullahi Energy Leadership Fellowship, to be able to support the president’s renewable agenda, and ensure that the young Nigerians who are players in the energy ecosystem are able to engage and interact with policymakers, with decision makers.”
Israel said the participants in the fellowship would be interacting with the Energy Commission of Nigeria, Renewable Energy Agency and all government energy agencies towards building partnership for finding solutions to energy challenges.
He added: “So there’s going to be a lot of opportunity for the young people in particular, for you to be able to meet with regulators and government agencies that they can partnered with to achieve their energy enterprise ideas and goals.
“The focus is on renewable energy, biogas and all of that. We want ‘UP NEPA’ issue to be a thing of the past. We want to support the president, his vision for power generation in Nigerian power distribution, and so we want to also bring in new players.”
One of the fellows and co-founder of Fosun Solar Energy Nigeria Limited, Nafisat Ovurebu, noted that energy remains the biggest challenge to the nation especially in the area of food production, saying programmes like the fellowship can proffer lasting solutions to the crisis.
“In Nigeria, the biggest challenge we have is not in the availability of resources. We have abundant resources. We have abundant energy resources. But those resources do not automatically translate to reliability. So abundance of resources does not mean reliability of resources,” she noted.