Minister plans local content bill for power sector

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, says the ministry is planning to have a law that will promote local content development in the power sector.

Adelabu stated this during his official visit to Momas Electricity Meters Manufacturing Company Limited in the Ibafo area of Ogun State on Friday.

According to him, President Bola Tinubu’s government has decided to support local manufacturers to reduce their dependence on foreign goods.

“We will support and encourage local industries, those people that have taken the risk to put their equity and debt capital into production, we should support them. We also intend to incentivise them by allowing them to have access to cheap funds and long-time debt capital.

“Lastly, we will patronise them. When they produce, we must buy those products. That’s what will give room for sustainability in their activities.

“In the power sector, it is our choice to have significant local content in our projects and in our contracts. In fact, we are trying to work on a bill that will legislate local content for the power sector, just like we have in the oil and gas sector. That is the only way we can sustain local producers,” he said.

Adelabu, who said the ministers in Tinubu’s cabinet are always on the field, acknowledged the fact that the country is passing through a lot of hardship as a result of rising inflation, the removal of fuel subsidy, harmonisation of the exchange rate and the consistent devaluation of the naira that has led to increasing prices of goods and services.

“But we are not bothered. We are not depressed. We are not discouraged. You cannot have an omelette without breaking eggs; and without pain, there will be no gain,” he noted

The minister explained that 90 per cent of Nigeria’s inflation is attributable to import dependency.

“We are an import-dependent country. We hardly make what we consume in Nigeria. When naira loses value, it will be expensive to import things, and the prices will keep rising. The only way to prevent this is to become self-dependent and self-reliant,” Adelabu remarked.

He regretted that “The population that was supposed to be an advantage to us has turned out to be a liability.

“It should be an advantage because if we produce anything here, we have the market. With the population, we are supposed to create factories here and create employment opportunities. We shouldn’t be bothered about the price of the dollar to naira at all. But the way it is now, we are using that population to import from other countries that have created their own factories and employed their own people”.

He said it was one of the cardinal points of President Tinubu to start import substitution by supporting local industries to reduce the influx of foreign goods.

“Once we are able to satisfy local demands and still have excess, we will start pushing it offshore and start earning foreign exchange,” he added.

Earlier, the Chairman of MEMMCOL, Kola Balogun, urged the Federal Government to create an enabling environment for local manufacturers to grow.

Balogun said the company, which was created about 30 years ago, has since been manufacturing prepaid metres locally, designing the products from scratch.

He charged the government to optimise the local capability “to streamline our proliferation of all kinds of things coming into the country for us to grow.”