By Bisi Bamishe
The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd), Mr. Mele Kyari, says no public wealth creation endeavour can achieve any meaningful success without energy security.
The GCEO stated this in a presentation at the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) Public Wealth Management Conference which held in Abuja on Tuesday.
He noted that all other wealth creating activities such as agriculture rely heavily on one form of energy or the other to thrive.
“If you don’t have energy, you don’t have agriculture. You can do all the agriculture but you can’t take it to the market, you may not be able to preserve it, you can’t even export it. So, all those indices are clearly connected to the ability to create energy,” he emphasized.
He disclosed that Nigeria has a huge energy deficit with about 70% of the population lacking access to clean cooking fuel and over 50% lacking access to electricity.
He listed some of the impediments to the achievement of energy security in Nigeria to include lack of investment in the energy sector due to uncertainty in the business environment and multiple taxation, adding that in the last 10 years, less than 3% of the total investment flow into Africa came into Nigeria.
He, however, assured that NNPC Ltd was working hard to lay the foundation for sustainable wealth creation by filling the energy deficit gap, stressing that the company’s growth trajectory from a loss position N803bn in 2018 to N2.5tr in 2022 was a testimony to the abundant potential of NNPC Ltd to lead the process of wealth creation in the country.
He emphasized that in spite of the challenges, NNPC Ltd is still the highest tax paying corporate entity in Nigeria.
