‘Government should tap into renewable energy potential’



OLAWUYI
Harvard and Oxford-trained scholar, Damilola Sunday Olawuyi, is a globally recognised professor of Energy and Environmental Law and director of the leading research think tank, the Institute for Oil, Gas, Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development (OGEES Institute) at Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti. He is Vice President of the Nigerian branch of the International Law Association; member of the World Commission on International Environmental Law; and expert member of the International Law Association Committee on Sustainable Natural Resource Development where he represents Nigeria. He served as visiting professor at Columbia University, Oxford University and the China University of Political Science and Law. He has several publications in leading international law journals on the subject of renewable energy, agriculture, climate change and sustainable development. In this interview with the Yetunde Ayobami Ojo, he says government should urgently develop the country’s enormous renewable energy potential.
Nigeria, like many oil producing countries, is still reeling from the impact of the drop in the prices of oil. Will the oil and gas sector ever fully recover?
Unlike many that have written and published the obituary of the oil and gas industry, we professionals in the field know that the future of the sector remains exceedingly bright. The industry has been through, and survived, similar periodic downturns in the past, ranging from the 1973 oil crisis (first oil shock) in which the price of oil increased 400 per cent, leading to scarcity in some countries; then the 1979 oil shock when prices increased 100 per cent and the third oil crisis in 1990s, which contributed to global economic recession of the early 1990s and the most recent one.
This recent downturn has hit all of us hard due to failure to government’s properly utilise proceeds of the glorious years, when oil sold over $100 per barrel, to develop our infrastructure and to vitalise other key sectors. I have worked in the oil and gas countries in the Middle East such as, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait, and they are, for example, not in recession as we speak, due to years of proper utilisation of oil proceeds. For an oil and gas giant like Nigeria to ever be in recession is a great shame.
SOURCE: https://guardian.ng/

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