Renewable Energy Adoption must be accompanied by commitment to produce constituent parts locally – Tunji Ariyomo

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The special adviser to the Ondo State governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, Engr Olatunji Ariyomo has suggested that adopting renewable energy must come with commitment to produce some needed parts locally if we must truly benefit from its economic impacts.

He made this known when a group, comprising young engineers from Engicom and Federal University of Technology Akure, FUTA paid him condolence visit in Akure and used the opportunity to interact with him on range of issues in Nigerian energy sector.

He also spoke to the budding engineers on what the government should do to harness the capacity of local engineers to boost the economy. He cited Malaysian experience when their leader challenged the engineers in the country to construct roads to show him they are better than the Chinese. He gave them the necessary supports and they are able to achieve the target.

On power challenges, he advised that the sector should be decentralised and run by private investors just as Canada where different power stations serve different communities. This will reduce the cost.

The budding engineers also used the opportunity to provide their own perspectives to some of the myriads of challenges facing the country. Amoo Olaoluwa, NUESA president suggested the adoption of solar power to which Ariyomo commented that, even though he is an advocate of solar energy, he won’t recommend relying solely on solar power to solve Nigerian energy challenges because of some shortcomings which includes low energy and also won’t improve the economy much as most of the materials needed are imported from other countries. We only assemble in Nigeria despite the availability of silicon as raw materials.

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Another young member, Ayobami Ogundairo suggested that the senior engineers can partner with young engineers (graduates and students) and give them these challenge as part of their university project. Ariyomo, while admitting this is idea capable of stimulating research in universities, said that may not work if the government is not ready to support as such project require active government involvement to ensure that the research output are deployed and not ended in workshop or laboratory as with many in the past.

He however recommended energy mix where each region takes advantage of the resources around them to generate electricity. For instance, South South can use the gas from the industry to power Turbines to generate electricity for the community around. The same for coal, hydro-power etc where they states have advantage.

Another issue raised by the young engineers is electronic voting for Nigerian elections. Ariyomo said our major challenge in this country is leadership. It is not until we have visionary leadership that we can begin to achieve that when and conduct electronic voting from our personal phones without the emotional blackmail by political influencers.