Prioritization of Government investment: Katsina State

By Dr. Ahmed Adamu

According to reports, the recently built government house and stadium in Katsina cost around 7 billion Naira, equivalent to 438 million US dollars. This money would have been enough to generate averagely around 7,300,000MWh using onshore wind plant, or 1,564,286MWh using Solar PV, or 3,650,000MWh using Hydro, or 6,257,143MWh using combined gas turbine and coal plant.(source:USDOE). According to World Bank development indicator, the whole Nigeria consumed 24,453,000MWh in 2011, dividing this by 37 states (including Abuja), you will get 660,891MWh per state. I know you will say the share of electricity consumption of these states are not proportionate, but let us go with the highest possible share for Katsina state. This means that the money spent in building the new government house and stadium can generate around 26% of what Nigeria consumed in 2011, and can generate 947% of what Katsina itself consumed in the same year (using gas turbine as a benchmark). Therefore, if these funds were invested to generate electricity, it would have given Katsina state more than nine times of what it consumed of electricity in 2011, with even an extra to help the industrious city of Kano.

Now, what if every state would contribute the said 7 billion Naira to power sector, what level of power generation can Nigeria have? You can do the maths yourself by now. The above calculations is based on US information(and there could be practical issues), but that would not be far different from what could be obtained elsewhere.

Becoming top 20 economies in the world cannot be possible without stable electricity. The impact of power supply can never be exaggerated. Yet, some governments spend billions of money for unnecessary projects. According to myself in a paper I presented at World Conference on Youth earlier this year, “Good Governance is when people’s interest and opinion direct the decision and commitment of a government, when government’s priority is to serve, protect and fulfil the desires of its people.”