Green Deal Nigeria: Distributing stoves to mothers

The Federal Executive Council recently approved the purchase and distribution of 750,000 units of clean cooking stoves and 18,000 wonder bags worth N9.2 billion for rural women under the National Clean Cooking Scheme. Whether the contract for the stoves awarded to Messrs Integra Renewable Energy Services Limited is an election campaign strategy or not, its timing and necessity is most critical at this time when the world is experiencing massive energy shift and adverse effect of climate change.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) database, Nigeria’s energy mix for cooking and lightening is still dominated by the traditional use of charcoal, firewood, and kerosene. This is explained by the fact that over 51 percent of the population lack access to electricity supply and for those that are connected to the national electricity grid, inconsistent supply has been the norm. This has led to over 70 percent of those with access to power depending on generator sets to augment inconsistent public power supply.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) report, ‘Fuel for Life: Household Energy & Health’, more than three billion people still burn wood, dung, coal and other traditional fuels inside their homes. According to the same report, breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes a day and two-thirds of adult females with lung cancer in developing nations are non-smokers, but cooking mothers. From the report, such resulting indoor air pollution is responsible for more than 1.5 million deaths a year, mostly of young children and their mothers, inducing acute respiratory infection, influenza and pneumonia.

If these traditional energy consumption patterns continue, not only is it going to lead to more respiratory diseases which most hospitals cannot handle given the inadequate skills and health facilities, it would also encourage massive cutting of trees and deforestation for firewood, making worse the effects of global warming, desertification, erosion, and flood. A multiplier effect is visibly observed in the rising food shortages, poor agricultural yield, inflation, excess heat, extinction of animals and unexplained diseases. 

From international health standards, reducing indoor air pollution from burning firewood, fume-emitting kerosene stoves and coal will reduce child morbidity and mortality. Protecting the developing embryo from indoor air pollution can help avert stillbirth, perinatal mortality and low birth weight. Getting rid of open fires and kerosene wick lamps in the home can prevent infants and toddlers being burned and scalded.

It is within these health and environmental reasons that such FEC efforts to reduce the dependency on and use of these traditional energy pollutants are commendable, especially when the substituting provision is established on the clean renewable energy sources. While many may fear that such effort may not be sustainable or expanded upon, there is need to urge the FEC and ministries of Environment and Power to take serious their obligations to invest in renewable energy. They should seek to implement to the letter all the contracts meant for investing in renewable energy such as the recently pledged support bid for renewable energy grant of $200 million (N33.6 billion) by the German Development Bank (KFW) and the signed MoU with Motir Seaspire, an America-based renewable energy investor, for a $4 billion 1200MW solar power plant.

While the Federal Government’s funding of the National Clean Cooking Scheme is commendable, it would have been an excellent idea if the N9.2 billion was invested in a facility that will produce the stoves back here in Nigeria. This would have made the intervention sustainable as it would grow local productive capacity, create jobs, provide new revenue in corporate income tax to government and reduce the pressure on the naira considering that the stoves under the extant scheme will be paid for in foreign currency. If we adopt this recommended approach, we would have had access to the stoves while at the same time deriving other benefits.

The Centre for Management Development had recently revealed that an estimated 60 million Nigerians invest about N1.6 trillion annually to purchase and maintain generator sets. This is more than the N1.12 trillion budgeted in 2014 to provide schools, hospitals, road and transport networks, manufacturing and agro-processing plants. The same generator sets emit fumes with lethal cocktail of poisonous, noise pollution and environmentally-unfriendly greenhouse gases. If Nigeria must get its energy mix right and have enough energy to power the entire on-and-off grid communities, then investments in renewable energy are imperative. Not only will such decentralization of energy source keep the Nigerian population safe, it will augment and solve the deficit power supply, cater for the off-grid communities, provide jobs and serve as a vital austerity measure now that international oil prices are on the decline.

Climate change is now an undeniable reality. Cutting carbon emission and keeping the earth and its population safe is an obligation responsible governments and nations are signing up to. Clean renewable energy sources have become the key tool in doing this, as the breakthrough in clean technology has become viral. Nigeria cannot be an exception to the global renewable energy trend. Nigeria is richly blessed with the desired renewable inputs – sunlight, wind, hydro, biomass, and most especially the rich manpower.

Donald I. Ofoegbu