For Mrs. Blessing Onyenchi, Mrs. Taiye Olajide
and other Nigerians who have been forced to join the ranks of those who use
traditional biomass such as charcoal and firewood for cooking, ‘a watched pot
never boils aptly captures their experience.’
This is because the more they keep watch over
what they are cooking, the longer it seems to take. They constantly have
to keep an eye on the cooking facilities to ensure that the fire does not
quench but in the process of doing that, they are daily exposed to smoke.
Onyenchi, whose family lives in Ojo Road,
Ajegunle, a densely populated Lagos suburb where most residents live below the
poverty line, was busy with a kettle on her ‘coal pot’ – a locally made cooking
stove that uses charcoal – on a Saturday evening when our correspondent visited
the place.
“I do not like the smoke coming from this coal
pot. But I am just managing it because I do not know what to do again. Smoke is
not good for one’s health because it will block one’s chest and cause catarrh.
But because of the situation we are in, we manage it and do not allow the smoke
to be too much. That is why we use charcoal, and not wood,” she said in a tone
laced with frustration.
Like Onyenchi, Olajide, who resides in Tiwo
Street, Ijesha, Surulere, Lagos, finds solace in coal pot as she could no
longer afford kerosene, which is less harmful than charcoal and firewood.
Also, a food vendor on Oyedeji Street, Ojo Road,
Mrs. Felicia Ogunleke, has increased the rate at which she uses charcoal and
firewood to prepare her food, while applying little kerosene to generate fire.
“I use charcoal and firewood a lot now. Many
people are now abandoning their kerosene stoves to use coal pots for cooking at
home. If you can buy a 35 centilitre of kerosene (a bottle of soft drink),
which is sold for N100 in my area, and pour some drops on the charcoal or
firewood and cover it with nylon, the fire will spread,” she said.
A ‘shameful’ shift
Two of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals
adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 are to ensure access to
affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030, and to take
urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
Residential solid fuel burning accounts for 25
per cent of global black carbon emissions, about 84 per cent of which is from
households in developing countries, according to the Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves.
An energy expert and Technical Director, Drilling
Services, Template Design Limited, Mr. Bala Zakka, described the shift towards
the use of charcoal in the 21st century as unfortunate.
He added that deforestation would be encouraged
with the drift towards firewood and charcoal.
Zakka said, ‘‘It simply means that there will be
increase in pollution and health hazards.”
Millions of Nigerians, most especially in the
rural areas, have, over the years, continued to rely on traditional biomass for
cooking despite the abundant crude oil and gas resources in the country.
The International Energy Agency said 70 per cent
(122 million) of the nation’s population were relying on traditional use of
biomass as of 2013, according to the World Energy Outlook 2015.
Commenting on the development, the President,
Nigerian Association of Energy Economics, Prof. Wumi Iledare, said it was a
shame that more people, instead of using Liquefied Petroleum Gas, were now
embracing traditional biomass for cooking.
“I saw better life in the past than what I see in
Nigeria today. If more people are now using firewood the way my mother did, I
don’t think we are making progress,” he said.
Economic woes worsen
The lack of access to clean cooking facilities by
most Nigerians is a reflection of the high level of poverty in the country,
where unemployment rate rose to 10.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015
from 9.9 per cent in the third quarter and 8.2 per cent in the second quarter,
according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The nation’s economy has continued to take
serious bashing from the sharp fall in global oil prices since mid-June 2014,
with adverse effects on the citizens, especially those at the base of the
economic pyramid.
The economy shrank by 0.36 per cent in the first
three months of this year for the first time since 2004, with the International
Monetary Fund saying the country would slide into recession this year for the
first time in more than two decades.
Now faced with deepening economic crisis, many Nigerians
have experienced significant drops in their purchasing power as inflation
accelerated to 16.5 per cent in June, the highest rate in almost 11 years.
“We are living in a country today where the
disposable income of many Nigerians cannot afford normal square meals, house
rent and basic necessities of human existence,” said Zakka.
Kerosene, cooking gas out of reach
For many years, Nigerians have been experiencing
scarcity of petroleum products as the country relies on importation for over 80
per cent of its fuel needs, despite its huge production of crude oil.
Currently, the scarcity of kerosene, used by many
Nigerians, has resulted in about 100 per cent increase in its price as it now
sells for as much as N300 per litre in some parts of the country.
Despite the recent liberalisation of the fuel
market, many marketers have yet to join the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation in importing kerosene as they continue to focus on Premium Motor
Spirit, popularly known as petrol.
According to the Executive Secretary, Major Oil
Marketers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Obafemi Olawore, the foreign exchange
scarcity plaguing the country has discouraged the importation of kerosene.
He said, “For the PMS we are importing, the NNPC
is helping us with the dollars. The NNPC has spoken to the international oil
companies; so, some of them are giving us the dollars.
“Even the NNPC cannot combine importation of
everything because of the scarcity of dollar. The militants (attacking oil and
gas facilities) are not allowing crude to sell at the correct quantity level
that will bring in more dollars.”
In Lagos, where many marketers get petroleum
products to sell to other parts of the country, a number of filling stations do
not have kerosene to sell.
Some of the stations that have the product are
selling for as high as N220 per litre, especially in Ikorodu, a
fast-developing, largely residential area on the outskirts of Lagos, sharing a
border with Ogun State.
With the non-availability of the product at many
filling stations, roadside vendors are selling a gallon (4.5 litres) of
kerosene for between N1, 200 and N1, 400.
The Director of Operations, KCC Investment
Limited, Mr. Akeem Adebayo, said his company, which deals in petroleum products
at Oko-Oba in Agege, Lagos, has been finding it difficult to get kerosene.
“The experience is getting tougher because to get
it (kerosene) from the depots, even from the yards, is not easy, and this is
what 60 to 70 per cent of the masses use,” he told our correspondent on the
sidelines of a workshop for small business owners in Lagos on July 19.
He said the product, which he was selling for
N110 to N120 per litre a couple of months ago, is now sold for between N210 and
N215 per litre.
Onyenchi said, “I used to buy kerosene but I had
to stop when the price increased. A small bottle of kerosene that I used to buy
for N120 is now N200-N250,”
“One can buy charcoal of N50 or N100 to cook
one’s food, and it can even last for more than a day,” she added.
While some households could have embraced the use
of LPG, also known as cooking gas, following the scarcity of kerosene, the rise
in the price of the gas is also not helping matters.
The National Treasurer, Nigerian Association of
Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers, Mr. Bayo Ogunrinde, said, “You can imagine a
situation where 12.5 kg of cooking gas that we were selling between
N2,500 and N2,800 now rising to between N4,000 and N4,500.
“The situation has also discouraged some people
who already have gas burners; they are forced to go back to the crude means of
energy because they cannot afford gas.”
Ogunrinde added that some people were saying
because of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy on the exchange rate, it had
become relatively more expensive to bring in gas.
“Another reason advanced is that the destruction
of pipelines by militants is affecting the supply of gas,” he stated.
Should subsidy return?
In January this year, the Federal Government
removed the subsidy on kerosene and raised the price to N83 per litre from N50.
The pricing template of the Petroleum Products
Pricing Regulatory Agency then showed that the N83 applied only to NNPC filling
stations.
In what has been described as partial
deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry, the government on
May 11 announced a new petrol price band of N135 to N145 per litre, bringing an
end to fuel subsidies.
The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, said the
move was caused by foreign exchange problem in the face of dwindling earnings.
For several years, stakeholders in the LPG space
had been calling for the removal of subsidy on kerosene, which is seen as a big
competitor to cooking gas, in a bid to promote the use of the latter.
However, Zakka said he did not believe that
government removed subsidy on kerosene to discourage its use.
He added, “What happened was that there were some
people who were short-sighted, who forgot or did not want to understand that
the Nigerian economy is very weak. They felt that by deregulating the petroleum
downstream sector, the economy will be strong.”
He described subsidy as a universally accepted
and recognised economic cushioning measure, especially for weak and emerging
economies.
Zakka said, “In a fragile economy, you cannot
deregulate; what you need to do, at worst, is to liberalise. You cannot
deregulate or remove subsidy in an economy where people have no options.
“As far as the present stage of Nigeria’s
development is concerned, it is better for the government to subsidise kerosene
so that the lower level of Nigerians will have access to it for cooking than to
push Nigerians into resorting to firewood and charcoal, which have bigger
implications.”
But Iledare, a professor of petroleum economics,
said the use of kerosene should be discouraged because of its environmental
hazards.
“Do not subsidise bad product for people to use.
Subsidising kerosene for cooking is like subsidising cigarettes. It is not
environmentally safe. But you cannot regulate against it if you do not create
alternatives,” he said.
For Mr. Darlington Udoh, who lives in Ojo Road,
Ajegunle, making kerosene available and affordable is “a dividend of democracy”
the less-privileged should enjoy.
He said, “The scarcity is really affecting me.
The amount I used to spend on kerosene was N400-N500 per gallon, but now I am
spending close to N1, 200-N1, 300. The price is too high.
“The government should try to bring down the
price of kerosene so that the masses can even benefit from the dividends of
democracy. We are in democracy, but we are not enjoying its dividends.”
A hidden killer
The Africa Progress Panel chaired by a former UN
Secretary-General and Nobel laureate, Mr. Kofi Annan, in its 2015 report,
described access to clean, non-polluting cooking facilities in sub-Saharan
Africa as low and unequal.
It said, “Almost four in five — 727 million —
rely for cooking on solid biomass, mainly fuelwood and charcoal. As a result,
600,000 people in the region die each year of household air pollution. Almost
half are children under five.”
The panel noted that the international community
had set the goal of achieving universal access to modern energy by 2030,
saying, “Sub-Saharan Africa is not on track to achieve that target. It is the
only region in which the absolute number of people without access to modern energy
is set to rise, by 45 million for electricity and 184 million for clean cooking
stoves.”
According to the report, Africa’s poorest
households are the unwitting victims of one of the world’s starkest market
failures.
The APP said, “We estimate that the 138 million
households comprising people living on less than $2.50 a day are spending $10bn
annually on energy-related products, such as charcoal, candles, kerosene and
firewood.
It said, “Clean, non-polluting cooking facilities
are vital to reduce Africa’s death toll from household air pollution but access
to these is even more restricted than access to electricity.
“If the poor could use more efficient energy
sources, they could reduce the share of income that they spend on energy and
free up resources for other priority areas. It could also reduce the amount of
time that women and girls spend collecting firewood and cooking.”
According to the panel, indoor air pollution is a
hidden killer and recent research has revealed far stronger relationships
between biomass-related pollution and respiratory tract infections, strokes,
ischaemic heart disease, lung cancer and obstructive pulmonary diseases.
“If governments in Africa and the wider
international community are serious about their commitment to ending avoidable
deaths of children, then clean cooking facilities must be seen as a much higher
priority. Put differently, achieving universal access to clean cooking stoves,
allied to wider measures, could save 300,000 young lives a year,” it noted.
The panel also said reducing the use of biomass
by 50 per cent would save 60-190 million tonnes of CO2- equivalent emissions,
as production and use of solid fuels for cooking consumes over 300 million
tonnes of wood annually in sub-Saharan Africa.
On the current situation in Nigeria, the Chief
Executive Officer, LiveWell Initiative, Mrs. Bisi Bright, called on the
governments to create an enabling environment, educate the people on the
demerits of using fossil fuels and introduce carbon tax and other incentives to
encourage the use of clean energy sources.
LPG: Suffering amid plenty
According to the World LPG Association, about 60
per cent of LPG is recovered during the extraction of natural gas and oil from
the earth, and the remaining 40 per cent is produced during the refining of
crude oil.
Nigeria is blessed with abundant oil and gas
resources, but not much of these have been translated into energy for the
benefit of its over 170 million population.
The nation’s four refineries with a combined
capacity of 445,000 barrels per day, two in Port Harcourt and one each in
Kaduna and Warri, have over the years operated far below their capacity due
largely to lack of maintenance.
At a time when the global shift towards cleaner
energy sources is gaining momentum, the consumption of LPG, which is clean and
efficient, remains very low in the country.
“If you look at other West African countries that
are smaller than Nigeria in terms of population, their consumption of LPG far
exceeds ours. That is to confirm to you that there is still a lot of gap to be
covered,” said Ogunrinde.
According to the NALPGAM executive, one of the
factors that have militated against LPG consumption in the country is lack of
infrastructure.
“We are currently exporting LPG,” he said, adding
that it was former President Olusegun Obasanjo who made it a deliberate policy
that a sizable proportion of LPG production be earmarked for local consumption.
He said before that time, there was irregular
supply of LPG in the country.
“With the intervention of the Nigeria LNG, the
supply became a lot more steady. But right now, the other infrastructure that
we need to use the gas like the cylinders and burners are being imported by
businessmen. Their prices have also gone up, and that has also been a form of
discouragement at this present time,” Ogunrinde said.
He said the few companies that were producing
cylinders in the country had closed shop because of raw material and
electricity challenges.
“More than 90 per cent of the cylinders are
imported, if at all there is still local production going on,” he added.
On his part, Iledare said there was no reason why
Nigeria should not have many companies involved in bottling gas for local
consumption, adding that Ghana was consuming more LPG than Nigeria.
Boosting clean cooking fuel
Industry experts have said that with over 170
million people in the country, increased utilisation of LPG for cooking would
create more jobs for Nigerians and contribute to economic development.
Also, Iledare stressed the need for right
policies and institutional empowerment on the part of the government, saying
that limited energy access, availability and affordability could be traced to
weak governance.
He said, “What are the policy drivers to make
energy available, accessible and affordable? It begins with empowering the
private sector to let them see that the market for this product is profitable.
I think government needs to create an enabling environment and not create
barriers of entry for people to be able to produce clean fuel. In some places,
rather than subsidising consumption, one can subsidise production. You give tax
incentives and tax holidays for people to be able to produce clean fuel.”
Zakka was of the view that it would not be easy
to encourage more Nigerians to shift to LPG with the minimum wage less than
$100 per month and considering the high price of the fuel.
He said, “If you want to encourage people to move
to cleaner energy source, what you do is to embark on awareness and campaign
and come up with incentives.
“There will be a national campaign and you are
going to make the cylinders available to people and the LPG available at
subsidised rates.”
Corroborating Zakka’s view, Ogunrinde said in
some other countries, people don’t necessarily pay for some of the facilities
like cylinders.
He explained, “They have companies that already
have cylinders and they remain the properties of these companies. The only
thing is that once you collect a cylinder from them, you can only fill it from
them. That reduces the capital outlay that is required in setting up cooking
gas facility in a home.”
Commenting on the fear some Nigerians have for
gas as cooking fuel, the NALPGAM executive said, “We, in NALPGAM, have been
emphasising the safety issue. We go to great lengths to educate people on the
correct usage. In the past, we have a lot of landlords who will say, ‘You can’t
use gas in my house.’ But that is changing now.”
Udoh, however, echoed the sentiment of many
Nigerians, saying, ‘‘If the government wants us to use gas, they should bring
down the price so that the masses can afford it.”
The Managing Director, Gas and Power Investments,
NNPC, Mr. Sam Ndukwe, told our correspondent that efforts were being made to
solve the logistics challenge hampering the supply of LPG.
He noted that the Federal Government had directed
the Nigeria LNG Limited to deliver 250,000 metric tonnes of LPG to the domestic
market, adding, “But there is a lot of logistics challenge in bringing LPG from
Bonny to deliver it where it can be used. So, they have not been able to
achieve the 250,000mt target.
“What they are doing now is that they want to
deepen the LPG logistics in such a way that it can be delivered to the coastal
areas, namely, Lagos; we are also looking at delivering in Port Harcourt or
maybe Calabar because in Lagos, fuel importation is also choking the available
space for ships to berth.”
Ndukwe said on the part of the NNPC, it was
trying to also expand its horizons by using the NNPC Retail Limited to be able
to bottle and then sell NNPC-branded cylinders to people.
‘‘So, when you do all that, in-country
consumption will increase, and then we will gradually displace further things
like kerosene,” he stated.
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