By Emmanuel Elebeke
The Chairman, Amuwo Odofin Local government Council, Comrade Adewale  Ayodele has concluded plans to take off a Pilot scheme on Solar energy as an alternative power supply in the area.

The aim is to surmount the challenges being posed by the perennial problem of power in the country, with the aim of enhancing Amuwo Odofin’s chances of experiencing a serious economic revolution.

Comrade Ayodele stated this at the just concluded annual economic summit organized by the council in Festac, Lagos.   This he said would help the government create sustainable alternative power source in the area .

In her  paper entitled “A Pilot Solar Project”, a resident scientist in Amuwo Odofin, Mrs Morenike Taire said despite the perennial promises from the federal government for improved power supply in the last 10 years, growth in power supply has dwindled in the face of increasing domestic use. Of the 15-18MW of electricity that the nation is said to require at the moment, he said that the nation only produce 3.5-3.8 MW, even as a lot of it are lost in transmission.

This situation according to her, had forced most blue chip manufacturers to depend solely on alternative source of power supply to survive.

With the cluster of industries in the Amuwo Odofin local government, coupled with its surging population   the need for solar power becomes imperative more so, as that would greatly enhance economic activities. For her the pressure from the  industrial area had put the LGA under industrial abuse.
Of all known alternative sources of power, she stated that the most widely accepted in the country has been solar because of the abundance of sunlight in Nigeria. She noted that for the same reasons, the Lagos state government had to embark on a solar project in rural communities through the injection of N150 million naira into its solar electrification scheme.

Expressing dissappointment over the less concern government was showing on the issue of alternative power in the country, Mrs Taire blamed bureaucratic bottleneck as the major factor that prevented adequate supervision and overseeing of solar projects that flooded the country few years ago by some solar enthusiast and practitioners.

She decried the absence of adequate legislation on provision of electric power to communities, iadding that it also reflects the inadequacy and unclear laws on  both state and federal levels.