Nigeria Content Online

The

World Bank has said it is prepared to provide support to any foreign

investor interested in Nigeria’s power sector. Onno Ruhl, World Bank

country director for Nigeria said the Bretton Woods institution

realises that the power sector is critical to the future of the

economy.

“We will do what we can to give comfort to investors who have the courage to come to invest in the sector in Nigeria,” he said.

According to him, private participation in the power sector was critical in order to see improvement.

“We

will focus on power generation effort and will also focus on getting

private participation in distribution companies especially key

distribution companies that have short term viability in their

horizon.”

He

said key distribution centres include Ikeja and Abuja distribution

centres. According to him, the major issue with Nigeria is the

implementation of the plans that have been drawn up over the years.

Speaking yesterday in Lagos at the bi-monthly breakfast meeting of the

Nigeria British Chamber of Commerce, the World Bank official said it

would be erroneous to think that solving the power problem would

translate to solving other issues in the country.

“It

is government’s business to make it easy for people to do business.

Should the government be more concerned about the power sector or

should it be concerned about social inclusion which is indeed very

important, the power sector is the simplest story as far as I am

concerned.”

Frightening statistics

Reeling

out statistics, he said the Nigeria has over 100 million people under

30 years of age which is more than the entire population of Libya,

Egypt and Tunisia combined. “Nigeria has 75 million people under 20.

Nigeria has 46 percent unemployment between 16 to 24 years of age.

Every year, 800,000 Nigerians pass their JAMB exams and do not get

admission into the university because there is no space for them.” He

said government has to find ways of including these people in the

economic space or they could be sources of social disorder in the years

ahead. He cited the Brazilian example where the government dedicated

about one percent of the country’s gross domestic product to cater for

the bottom 20 percent of the population. He said procedures at the

country’s ports need to be overhauled in order to make it easier for

goods to be cleared at the point of entry. According to him, the

country would achieve more progress by improving the business climate

than it would in the power sector which would take several years to

accomplish.

Improving business climate

“You

can achieve more in the short term by making the business climate

better than in power because power will still take time. Improving the

business climate would have more impact on job creation. We need

government with political guts to do this,” he said.

On the future prospects of Nigeria, he said the country can get it

right if the implementation strategy is well thought out. “Nigeria is a

country with enormous potentials not because it has oil but because of

it has a good balance sheet, because it has a large market which cannot

be ignored and because it has more money in its pocket more than

before,” he said.