When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came on board, understanding the importance of electricity to national development, it did not take long before he assented to the electricity bill, which authorizes states, companies, and individuals to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity.
The new electricity law repeals the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA), which was signed by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005. The new Act signed by President Tinubu consolidates all legislations dealing with the electricity supply industry to provide a comprehensive and ideal institutional framework to guide the post-privatization phase of the Nigerian electricity supply industry and encourage private sector investments in the industry.
On the 15th of September, Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State signed into law, the Enugu State electricity bill, which is a major step towards achieving the projected economic growth by Mbah, which will also make the state the premier destination for investment, business, tourism, and living. With the new law, Enugu would be able to issue licenses to private investors who have the ability to operate mini-grids and power plants.
This new law provides a framework for the improvement of access to electricity in rural, semi-urban, unserved, underserved, and urban areas through the use of conventional sources and renewable energy off-grid and mini-grid solutions.
This will also create a market for renewable energy and stimulate investments in the sector, electricity generating companies will be mandated to either generate power from renewable energy sources, purchase power generated from renewable energy, or procure any instrument representing renewable energy generation.
The audacious dream to increase the state's economy exponentially from the current level of $4.4b to $30b in the next four to eight years will stumble through a lot of bottlenecks without reliable power supply.
The law is symbolic and a veritable enabler for private sector investors interested in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity to come into the state. This, in turn, will create a value chain of businesses, create job opportunities for our teeming youths, and increase the productivity level of the state.
The industrialization of the state has come to bear because many industries are looking for alternative areas where they will get stable power supply for their production machines and plants. With energy issues sorted, the industrial boost is assured and will make industrialization in Enugu even more feasible, as Mbah works on scaling Enugu from a public sector economy to a private sector-based economy.
In an economy massively based on the private sector, one important aspect of the ease of doing business vital to the growth of such an economy is the availability of energy, which in an era of a fast move away from fossil fuel, becomes the heartbeat of business growth.
It is utterly impossible to achieve industrialization without sustainable energy. Mbah is indeed paving the way for sub-national industrialization and the influx investments in Enugu State.
... Nnamani Arinze Darlington is a political analyst and a social commentator
