Nigeria Content Online

Forgive the
sarcasm, but if all the sugarcane chewed and sucked in Nigeria were
processed into ethanol, Nigeria would be a leading global giant in
alternative and renewable energy. What else wouldn’t we have been
colossal players in, given the abundance of liquid and solid minerals,
food crops and biodiverse forests with plants useful in pharmaceutics
and cosmetics? Nigerians must be sick of everyone telling them what a
resource-rich country they are blessed with! One 12-year old boy in
Kampala, Uganda, on hearing where I came from, wondered why he always
saw fuel queues in my country on television. Did Nigeria not have so
much crude oil?

The matter is
simple. We must begin to hit back and tell our worldwide critics and
sympathisers that, yes; we have the natural resources, but not the
capable brains (scientific, managerial and political) to turn them into
wealth for ALL the Nigerian people. The new entrants to the club of
“oil producing nations,” Ghana may learn a thing or two from Nigeria.
One of the lessons is that being blessed or endowed with oil is not a
guarantee for complementarities in the capacity to transform minerals
into economically viable products and best practice in governance.
After all, the children of rich parents were not always the brightest
in your school.

In the 1980s, the
fore-runners of FEPA mildly investigated what could be done with an
invasive, but exotic aquatic plant, the nipa palm. Nipa was, and is
still displacing mangroves from the Calabar coast to the Niger delta.
It was clear from research in southeast Asia that nipa sap, like palm
wine could be fermented and processed into ethanol. From ancient times,
people have fermented grains for the resulting residue of ethyl
alcohol, or ethanol.

Without further
indigenous research, Nigeria has now joined the nations that perceive
in ethanol the elixir to impacts of climate change, the alternative to
fossil fuels. Clearly, as an additive to gasoline, ethanol is a
profitable motor fuel, and some state governments are already
constructing ethanol plants. Brazil has the largest fuel ethanol
industry, produced from sugar-cane, and noted for high carbon
sequestration.

However, for some
time now, scientists, politicians and civil society in the
technologically advanced areas of the world have been chronicling the
growing complaints levelled at ethanol, the supposedly clean fuel.
Ethanol produced from corn has a number of critics who suggest that it
is primarily just recycled fossil fuels because of the energy required
to grow the grain and convert it into ethanol. There is also the issue
of competition with use of corn for food production.

TIME magazine’s Michael Grunwald was not mincing words: ethanol
brewed from corn is technically a renewable fuel, but it’s even dirtier
than gasoline. The carbon supposedly saved by using farmland to grow
fuel is ultimately devoured by the conversion of forests and wetlands
into farmland for feedstock. Further, ethanol skeptics add that the
volatile fluid can’t travel in pipelines along with petrol, because it
picks up impurities easily.

The only alternative for transportation is
by trucks or barges, and it is very expensive! While the debate over
ethanol’s credentials rages, citizens of the technology-deficient
Nigeria should continue chewing their sugar cane and not worry too
much. That is the usual danger when a nation simply buys technology
without contributing to its research. Your acquired product may become
obsolete, dubious and useless by the time it arrives at Tin Can Island!