Stakeholders from the education, energy, communication, and financial sectors have submitted in diverse unison that availability of affordable and stable power supply is essential in the delivery of Impactful education to all who thirst for knowledge.
The speakers at the 2024 annual summit of the Education Writers’ Association of Nigeria, EWAN, gave the submission in Lagos while speaking on the theme: “High Tariffs: Resolving Electricity Crisis in Nigeria’s Education Institutions.”
Vice Chancellor University of Lagos UNILAG, Professor Folashade Ogunsola while acknowledging that energy crisis is a national issue, which affects other sectors, said education is fundamental and it should be spared from agony of unstable and expensive power supply which impedes the delivery of evidence based knowledge to Nigerians.
Professor Ogunsola stated that most universities and educational institutions are in debt due to accumulating power tariffs.
The Minister of State for Education, Yusuf Sununu, expressed hopes that the summit will push forward innovative measures to tackle the energy supply problems.
Sununu hinted that as part of the government’s commitment, the federal Ministry of Education is engaging the public-private partnership model to address the issue, especially in the school systems.
In his remarks, the spokesman of the Association of Nigeria Electricity Distributors (ANED), Sunday Oduntan, while addressing the ongoing power supply challenges plaguing the nation, emphasized that while Nigerians are desperate for reliable power, their reluctance to pay current tariff is inimical to the growth of the nation’s power sector.
He noted that while the aim is to provide a minimum of 20 hours of electricity, financial constraints have hindered progress.
The representative of the CEO of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Aisha Bello reiterated the commission’s role in regulating and fixing tariffs while Engr Ibraheem Abdul, Rector of Yaba College of Technology, criticized the indifference towards the ongoing power crisis, insisting that institutions should have the autonomy to choose their distribution band.
Chairman of EWAN, Mojeed Alabi explained that the summit seeks to proffer practical solutions to energy crisis in the education sector and government must have the political will to invest in affordable power supply from the basic to the teitary level of education
Alabi called for research based solutions to the crisis of energy bedeviling teitary institutions across the country.
