Energy Security Critical To Public Wealth Creation – Kyari
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The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mr Mele Kyari on Tuesday said energy security has a critical role to play in the creation of public wealth.
Kyari who made this known at the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) Public Wealth Management Conference on Tuesday in Abuja, maintained that no wealth creation endeavour can achieve meaningful success without energy security.
A statement signed by Chief Corporate Communications Officer of the NNPC Ltd, Olufemi Soneye, quoted the GCEO as saying all other wealth-creating activities such as agriculture rely heavily on one form of energy or the other to thrive.
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The statement partly reads: “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.”
Kyari 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 including 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 of 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 was still the highest tax-paying corporate entity in Nigeria.
