The
World Bank has said it is prepared to provide support to any foreign
investor interested in Nigeria’s power sector. Onno Ruhl, World Bank
country director for Nigeria said the Bretton Woods institution
realises that the power sector is critical to the future of the
economy.
“We will do what we can to give comfort to investors who have the courage to come to invest in the sector in Nigeria,” he said.
According to him, private participation in the power sector was critical in order to see improvement.
“We
will focus on power generation effort and will also focus on getting
private participation in distribution companies especially key
distribution companies that have short term viability in their
horizon.”
He
said key distribution centres include Ikeja and Abuja distribution
centres. According to him, the major issue with Nigeria is the
implementation of the plans that have been drawn up over the years.
Speaking yesterday in Lagos at the bi-monthly breakfast meeting of the
Nigeria British Chamber of Commerce, the World Bank official said it
would be erroneous to think that solving the power problem would
translate to solving other issues in the country.
“It
is government’s business to make it easy for people to do business.
Should the government be more concerned about the power sector or
should it be concerned about social inclusion which is indeed very
important, the power sector is the simplest story as far as I am
concerned.”
Frightening statistics
Reeling
out statistics, he said the Nigeria has over 100 million people under
30 years of age which is more than the entire population of Libya,
Egypt and Tunisia combined. “Nigeria has 75 million people under 20.
Nigeria has 46 percent unemployment between 16 to 24 years of age.
Every year, 800,000 Nigerians pass their JAMB exams and do not get
admission into the university because there is no space for them.” He
said government has to find ways of including these people in the
economic space or they could be sources of social disorder in the years
ahead. He cited the Brazilian example where the government dedicated
about one percent of the country’s gross domestic product to cater for
the bottom 20 percent of the population. He said procedures at the
country’s ports need to be overhauled in order to make it easier for
goods to be cleared at the point of entry. According to him, the
country would achieve more progress by improving the business climate
than it would in the power sector which would take several years to
accomplish.
Improving business climate
“You
can achieve more in the short term by making the business climate
better than in power because power will still take time. Improving the
business climate would have more impact on job creation. We need
government with political guts to do this,” he said.
On the future prospects of Nigeria, he said the country can get it
right if the implementation strategy is well thought out. “Nigeria is a
country with enormous potentials not because it has oil but because of
it has a good balance sheet, because it has a large market which cannot
be ignored and because it has more money in its pocket more than
before,” he said.
