The Youth Wing of the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC), has 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 National Youth Leader of the APC, Dayo Israel made this pledge at the opening ceremony of the Dr Mustapha Abdullahi Energy Leadership Fellowship (MAELF) in Abuja yesterday.
The seven-day residential fellowship which is to develop young professionals in Nigeria’s energy sector focuses on renewable energy; energy transition policies, climate action, leadership and governance.
The APC youth leader admitted that poor energy generation and distribution was the major challenge affecting almost all sectors of the economy, hence the youth wing of the ruling party is committed to ensuring the issue is addressed by the present administration.
“We know that energy has been a major problem in Nigeria, and the President says that if he doesn’t fix Nigeria, the 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,” he said.
Israel also 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 also announced a N17.5 million grant supported by both Dr Mustapha Abdullahi and the governor of Lagos state, Babajide Sawo-Olu for the fellows, among other opportunities.
“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 partner 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.
“Our target is to be able to make Nigeria a better place, and to be able to put Nigeria to a country that Nigerians in the diaspora are proud of and they want to come back home. For any of these things to happen, we must have better infrastructure, which is what the President is doing with the Lagos Coastal Road, the Badagry Expressway, Sokoto-Badagry, and all the infrastructure the President is building.
“When you build roads, you build industries. You need power at the heart of all of these things. We want to contribute our own little thing to what the President is doing to make Nigeria a better place,” he added.
For her part, 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’s economy 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 our biggest problem in Nigeria is on how… I think that should shift the problem of Nigerian electricity to how our energy is actually being generated. How is it being distributed, transmitted and financed,”she added.
