Closing Nigeria’s Energy Deficit Gap Remains Top Priority – NNPC

Despite the various obstacles facing the country such as insufficient investment and multiple taxes, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company

(NNPC) Limited has expressed its commitment to filling the energy deficit gap and contributing significantly to wealth creation in Nigeria.

The group chief executive officer of the  NNPC, Mele Kyari, during his presentation at the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) Public Wealth Management Conference in Abuja, on Tuesday, said no public wealth creation endeavour can achieve any meaningful success without energy security.

The GCEO noted that all other wealth creating activities such as agriculture rely heavily on one form of energy or the other to thrive.

“If you don’t have energy, you don’t have agriculture. You can do all the agriculture but you can’t take it to the market, you may not be able to preserve it, you can’t even export it. So, all those indices are clearly connected to the ability to create energy,” he emphasized.

He disclosed that Nigeria has a huge energy deficit with about 70 per cent of the population lacking access to clean cooking fuel and over 50 per cent lacking access to electricity.

He listed some of the impediments to the achievement of energy security in Nigeria to include lack of investment in the energy sector due to uncertainty in the business environment and multiple taxation, adding that in the last 10 years, less than 3% of the total investment flow into Africa came into Nigeria.

He, however, assured that NNPC Ltd was working hard to lay the foundation for sustainable wealth creation by filling the energy deficit gap, stressing that the company’s growth trajectory from a loss position N803bn in 2018 to N2.5tr in 2022 was a testimony to the abundant potential of NNPC Ltd to lead the process of wealth creation in the country.

He emphasised that in spite of the challenges, NNPC Ltd is still the highest tax paying corporate entity in Nigeria.