Imported User:
The Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) has berated the slow pace of implementation of the Federal Government’s Power Roadmap launched by President Goodluck Jonathan several months ago.
In a state of the nation’s economy address presented by NACCIMA President, Chief Ademola Ajayi in Lagos on Wednesday, NACCIMA said efforts being made by government to fix the power sector have not shown any remarkable result in the amount of power available to consumers in the country.
“We acknowledge the on-going relentless effort to overcome the power issue, but we must express our worries with what appears to be a slow pace in the implementation of the Roadmap for Electricity in the country. The present state of power supply in the country has continued to constrain capacity utilisation in the industries and also increase cost of doing business”, Ajayi said.
NACCIMA urged government to give priority attention to the speedy realisation of the targets of the increasing power generation to 10,000 megawatts by the end of this year 2012 and the expected 30,000 megawatts and above by 2020.
Stressing that the crux of the briefing was to charge the Federal and State governments to gather speed in the transformation agenda, which has four years to actualise, Ajayi said more than ever before, Nigerians were too eager to see positive changes in the soonest possible time.
Ajayi noted that areas requiring significant improvement include: ‘Agricultural Productivity and Production, and the domestication of the Oil and Gas’, which jointly contributed more than 60 per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP) and provided over 60 per cent of total employment last year.
He pointed out that there was also a clear signal of the need for government to be committed to diversifying of the economy through worthwhile incentives to empower the non-oil sector of the economy, especially Solid Minerals Exploration and Exploitation.
He explained that other key areas that require immediate attention were Education, Health, Roads among others, stressing that the alternative to education which was ignorance was undesirable while the situation where a number of Nigerians spend over N60 billion (about US$400 million) outside Nigeria for advanced medications was inexcusable and constitutes another avoidable drain on our national resources.
