Last Monday June 20, 2016 one of the two pioneers’ for clean energy, Bertrand Piccard who took control of the cockpit of a solar airplane at 6.30 UTC from the JFK airport New York, cruised across the Atlantic Ocean without fuel and landed safely at Seville Airport, Spain Thursday June 23, 2016 by 05.38 UTC. The airplane named Solar Impulse 2 had a 71 hours 8 minutes uninterrupted flying time. The Flight 15 in the series of the first Round-The-World Solar Flights without fuel covered a distance of 6765 km, flying electric with solar energy of 1388 kWh, zero fuel and zero emissions. Piccard’s transatlantic adventure was anchored on research and development in aviation powered by the sun.

Today we are in the club of nations producing petroleum and not knowing what to do with it; groping and wallowing in memories of long-gone old days of not knowing what to do with our petrodollars. Collectively we have not been able to utilize our innate releasing mechanisms to stimulate triggering instinctive behaviours to tackle identified challenges.

Last Sunday President Muhammadu Buhari in a national broadcast to mark his one year in office called for dialogue with the Niger Delta communities to find lasting solution to the spate of vandalism of critical energy infrastructure. He did not mince his words on militiamen testing the administration’s will and resolve. There was the choice of carrot-and-stick approach by the President which may be ideal. But the current agitators’ comprehension of the meeting between government and ex-militants in Abuja and Benin may not have been that of a conciliatory gesture considering the President’s speech to fish out the perpetrators, and their sponsors brought to justice.

Nigerians are having a spread of consequences in last week’s Federal Government increase in the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol from N86 to N145, an increment of over 67 percent. Subsidy take back generated controversy among the government, the labour movement which called its members to strike and indeed Nigerians.

Though stakeholders are divided over the impact of the fuel price hike on the Nigerian economy in the medium to long term, it is however, a general consensus that in the short term, the effect of the hike on the economy would be unpleasant and near disastrous. In the wake of the hike, the Federal Government and other stakeholders had stated that the new price would bring temporary hardship on Nigerians, stating that it is a bitter pill that everyone must swallow for the country to survive difficult times and move forward.