By Genevieve Aningo
Against the global community calls for nations to transit to renewable energy, greener shipping, technological innovations to reduce carbon foot prints, green house emissions and climate change, experts at the two-day national conference organised by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport(CILT)Nigeria, on Tuesday tagged,‘Sustainable Innovations In Global Logistics and Transport’ have called on African countries, especially Nigeria to explore their areas of capacity and comparative advantage.
Captain, Suleiman Baiyee, a mariner while making his presentation on “De-Carbonization in Transport”, advised that Nigeria should explore Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) as the country lacks the infrastructural enablement for renewable energy.
In his words, “The biggest resource of renewable energy we have is gas. People talk about other things, we don’t have the capacity. Let’s look at our resources; LNG has been identified as the transition fuel for us to move to any other resource”.
The marine Don, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Genero Engineering buttressed that Nigerians carbon emission is less than 1% thus we should focus on the opportunities we can leverage with the low statistics. “Our emission is less than 1%percent. One of the things we should consider is what opportunities it presents for us today. We should be looking at the opportunities that it gives us. We should be looking at developing our infrastructure and capitalizing on it. Nigeria is at the lower end of everything when it comes to green house gasses. LNG would give zero emission but we are focusing on a lot of things. We must become selfish, the only way this country can develop is by us looking internally rather than externally. We must become selfish”.
He stressed: “IMO has got certain targets, very soon the ships that come in here would not use diesel, what are we going to do? If we have the foresight to say we have LNG, we need to have terminals that support it by building up an industry, where the LNG foreign vessels would come in.
Also, Prof. Charles Asenime, Dean, School of Transport, Lagos State University agreed with Capt. Baiyee’s views and chipped in that the cost of acquiring renewable energy in Nigeria is exorbitant.
‘’Sometimes, we just take hookline and sinker on what is given to us from the western world , we have not taken off, if they are de-carbonizing, we should grow first, grow before we can de-carbonize. How many people can afford the solar energy? It’s expensive to start it. The best alternative is Liquefied Natural gas. We can leverage on gas as alternative. What we should be doing is finding solutions to our own local problems, we don’t expect the West to give us their solution”, said Prof. Asenime.
The Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambo represented by Deputy Director, Research and Statistics, Ministry of Transportation, Alhaji, Ibrahim Muhammed Biu, echoed the laudable efforts of the Federal Government to provide Nigeria with an innovative marine transport system in tune with trends in the society. He read; ‘’ the Federal Government is making concerted efforts to establish critical transport infrastructure to ensure sustainable transport and logistics. Its ports reform programme aims at decongesting the seaports, by taking shipping and port services closer to importers and exporters, The recent Dala Inland Dry Port declaration as Port of Origin and Destination is a major milestone in that regard” .
Transport and logistics Stakeholders, present at the CILT’s Conference which also serves as their Annual General Meeting(AGM)includes: Chief Teete Owusu-Nortey, the president-elect, CILT International; Prof. Kayode Oyesiku, Chairman, Conference Planning Committee; Hajia Aisha Ali-Ibbrahim, founder Women in Logistics and Transport (WiLAT); Chief Adebayo Sarumi, a former Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority.
