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As part of its last minute pet project, the federal government recently announced a decision to start the development of ethanol as alternative fuel. That decision comes along with the research on nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The two projects are good.
While nuclear energy may cost Nigeria a lot in terms of finance and raise serious environmental concerns for a country with no maintenance culture, ethanol fuel may prove to be less costly, easily sourced and environmentally friendly. With even subsistence agriculture, ethanol fuel could be easily sourced from a variety of sources such as beet sugar, vegetables or vegetable oil and cassava, materials for which Nigeria need not import or borrow. What more, its cleanness may put Nigeria on the list of environmentally-friendly nations.
Properly researched and produced, ethanol could be a veritable source of foreign exchange for Nigeria and if popularised, it could help government reverse its low agricultural production . It could help boost food production and create employment, especially in the rural areas thereby checking rural-urban drift. It is for these potentials that we commend the initiative as far as good thinking goes. A caveat must however be drawn here in view of the many abandoned well-thought-out projects in this country.
Government should give Nigerians a workable blueprint for its execution. One that would expose the potentials, the sources of the raw materials and where they can be sourced and harnessed for general use and the timeline within which its effect would be felt. In our thinking, this would guide against the usual system failure where potential producers rush to work only to see their efforts go down the drain and their capital lost. We are also quick to recommend to government not to close its eyes to other sources of energy such as solar and wind.
While nuclear energy could be expensive with attendant negative environmental impact, the latter could be easily harnessed from virtually every corner of Nigeria. It is hoped that government would take these suggestions seriously and prove to Nigerians that this is not another drainpipe or a pipedream.