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DMO says only 40 per cent Nigerians enjoy electricity

From TONY OTARU, Abuja

IN spite of the claims by the Federal Government that it is putting finishing touches to ongoing power projects aimed at restoring back uninterrupted electricity supply to the nation, the Debt Management Office {DMO] is of the opinion that there is a huge infrastructure deficit in critical sector and argued that only forty percent Nigerians currently have access to electricity. Director-General of the Debt Management Office [DMO], Abraham Nwankwo said the nation currently requires more than 10,000MW of electricity but that installed generation capacity is presently 6,000 MW while available energy output is only about3,000MW compared to 39,000MW enjoyed in South Africa with a population less than one third of Nigeria's.

Nwankwo gave the figures in a paper entitled, ˜Prospects for the Nigeria Infrastructure Fund' presented to the Nigeria Infrastructure Summit held in Abuja .

He stated that other decayed infrastructures apart from the power sector include those of Roads, Ports and railways, all of which has turned the nation into huge infrastructural deficit. According to him, ˜From all indications, Nigeria's road network falls below that of most developing countries because the length of roads she has today is about 195,200Km of which about 15.3per cent are paved even as about 50per cent of the same road network are in poor conditions.

He explained that while a port service is inefficient with deplorable state, the railway infrastructures are also in a dilapidated state with very limited coverage. To turn around this urgly table, Abraham Nwankwo disclosed that Nigeria needs to invest over 100 Billion Dollars in just four infrastructural areas such that 18.20 billion dollars will be invested in power, 8.17billion dollars for Rail tracks, 14 billion dollars for roads while 60 billion dollars will be ear marked for oil and gas. He stated that these infrastructures and related investments are critical to achieving 13percent annual growth rate of GDP set by the government to make Nigeria realized her dreams of becoming one of the 20 largest economies in the world by the year 2020.

He remarked that Nigeria has adopted various initiations like the privatization exercise as well as other reforms carried out to strengthen the economy notwithstanding, the country needed to widen the scope of the financial and capital markets in line with FSS 2020 by using the derivative instruments to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the financial markets.

In addition the DMO chieftain stressed that government must embark on creating Nigeria infrastructure Fund through funds could be mobilized and deployed to address the nation's huge infrastructural deficit. He assured that prospects of such funds are positive given the numerous favorable internal and external factors adding that there was also the need to set a time line for urgently addressing the challenges identified by stakeholders.