Christine Onwuachumba
Mrs. Anita Nana Okuribido parades an enviable profile. For several years, she held the post of the secretary-general of Council for Renewable Energy Nigeria (CREN) and she is currently sitting at the helm of affairs in the women’s group of NACCIMA as the deputy president.
She has spearheaded the initiatives of Women in Energy group directed at spreading the message of clean energy to women in remote parts of the country.
In this interview with Daily Sun, Mrs. Okuribido explains how renewable energy empowerment of rural homesteads can better the lot of women and significantly contribute to agricultural development and sustainability of the nation.
You have spoken at various times about “energy poverty” and the woman. Is it just a buzzword?
Nigeria still has a lot of work to do in channelling the use of clean cook stove. How many women can afford clean gas when it is about N4,000 for a 12kg cylinder?
So, many women have resorted to the use of kerosene, which emits poisonous substances. It is the reason a lot of women have lung diseases, with their children, because when they are cooking, children are around them. If you give a woman the option of using clean cook stove, you are saving about 10 people around her.
Now, energy poverty has the face of a woman because 80 per cent of the energy needs will definitely be that of the woman. We need to reduce energy poverty because of women. Once we reduce that, there will be a resonating effect on the economy, which cannot be compared. If you look at the entrepreneurial value chain such as hair-styling, fashion design and even frying of akara balls, women constitute about 64 per cent of the SMEs in Nigeria and they all use energy.
Is this borne out of personal experience or an observation from some women in the rural communities?
It is an experience that I have passed through, first, as the secretary-general of the Council for Renewable Energy, since 2007, and later as the president in 2014, until a few months ago when I handed over.
I have gone through the experience when we worked directly with these women. Most communities in Nigeria are agrarian communities, either fishing or farming.
When it comes to enterprise, if the woman makes N100, she spends most of it on the husband and the children. If you are able to let her have clean energy at affordable prices as mandated by the SDG goals, do you know how many families you would be saving?
She would make more money and be happy.
What plans do you have for these women?
Presently, 120 million Nigerians in the rural areas are scavenging for energy. At Women in Renewable Energy, we have a programme tagged “One Nigerian Child, One Solar Reading Lamp” and we are targeting 40 million Nigerian children.
If 40 million Nigerian children put on their lamps at night and you have a drone fly over them, they will say this place is illuminated. Part of our plan is to put a solar kiosk in each of the 774 local government areas. Several things could be done in the kiosk such as hair-styling and fashion designing. If it is a fishing community, they can put freezers. Certainly, that will have a tremendous effect on the economy.
What role is government expected to play in this?
If you establish a community-based organisation, you don’t need government because everything you need is in the community. You need cultural and traditional rulers.
We begin by doing a needs assessment and innovate around it. When I know your needs, I would innovate around your needs. To know your needs, I do research on how I can satisfy the needs. What is needed is backward integration, research and then I innovate to meet a social need that will make the people happy. I don’t need government for this.
The moment I proffer solution to this need, then we have a mutual understanding and everybody is in harmony. I make you happy and you make me happy too. Everything has to be symbiotic. Everything has to be mutually beneficial.
When you get into a fishing community, where you have 100 women, 100 youths, 200 children, and 80 men, that is good. We are into fishing. Fishing is one that affects me most, in the sense that you would see the men go fishing in the night; when they come back, the women are there waiting for them in the dark with no illumination.
By morning, when there is daylight, they return to sort the fish and by then three-quarters of the fish would have gone bad. Now, you can imagine all the energy the men had put into the work at night, and because of lack of renewable energy, their achievement is so minimal. This has been so since Mungo Park discovered River Niger.
You don’t expect me to wait for government to bring illumination to the fishing jetty when I can change that? It is simple. As soon as the men bring in the fish, the women sort it out using solar illumination and quickly put the fish in the solar freezer to preserve.
Government has not done anything for many years, and I should still wait for the government? I won’t wait for them. Let us proffer solutions to our problems and deal with it. There are investors out there that are ready to help us and we are ready to proffer solutions. We just need to call to them and say, I know my problem. This is the solution to my problem, solar fridge on a fishing jetty. Give me solar pavilion that they can use to see and sort out the fish at night.
What are you aiming to achieve with your women empowerment initiatives?
First and foremost, it is to innovate with power. When you have electricity, you have power, you think of so many things. You turn opportunities into lifelines. When we launch women empowerment, we will send women to become light ambassadors. Every woman must preach green. We have women in oil and gas, in energy, in renewable energy and various groups. All of them have been talking. When we come together as group in energy, we will have a voice. When government sees that these women are concerned, they will be forced to act.
Without any government support, we have been able to give 12 million Nigerian children solar lamps. With one voice behind our advocacy, we can tell government what we have done. If they work with us, we will achieve more.
Then there would be inclusion of women in the policy process. They would be forced to include us in the policy process of renewable energy (or energy, as the case may be) and we will have that voice when they are talking. Presently, when they do the budget, they consider only the straight energy, and straight energy is not working.
If we were given only 10 per cent to do renewable energy, we could easily go into many communities, do smart grid solution and, within one week, I could have one megawatt of electricity through renewable energy sources and thousands of homes would be electrified and women who go through the drudgery of producing, cultivating, harvesting, peeling cassava, grating and roasting to produce garri can conveniently complete the tasks in a short period of time by using solar cassava graters, solar cassava peelers, and so on.
It will help to remove the drudgery from the lives of these women. They will look their age because they will be relaxed and happy.
How do you get a rural community to adopt renewable energy?
When you first get into a community, they are scared of you. So, you have to gain their confidence. We go to them with all our gadgets, all our devices in renewable energy, the clean cook stoves, the illumination, solar fan, solar fridges and so on.
We have to live among them for about two days and show them how they can improve their lives by making use of these devices, which we call the game-changer. We are changing the lives of these women and they see it themselves.
What has been the bright spot so far?
I started it about 32 years ago, from the University of Ife, when I did my thesis on what we called alternative source of energy at the time. It is now called renewable energy.
For many years, I was the lone voice in the wilderness, whether man or woman. I was the one preaching renewable energy. But now, we have about 300 women in renewable energy. Initially, when they started Women in Renewable Energy Association, we were probably about 12 members. Some other women groups in renewable energy, too, are springing up all over Nigeria.
I believe in working together as a group so that we can walk far. On the international scene, we have received some recognition. We will get an audience sometime next year in Europe to talk about how we can work with women in renewable energy to transform our society. The story is very encouraging.
What are the challenges facing the adoption of renewable energy in Nigeria?
There are still a lot of challenges because renewable energy is a technology. And Nigeria is an importing country, instead of a manufacturing one. If we can manufacture some devices in the name of renewable energy, it will go a long way. And, of course, the foreign exchange is a no-go area. A dollar is a dollar, a dollar would do what a dollar would do; now we are changing N360 for one dollar. N360 can buy a meal for a Nigerian, or even two. One dollar cannot buy a meal. Now, I have to spend so much money to buy solar devices, renewable energy devices. The initial cost of deploying a renewable energy system is very high. That is a big challenge. I should be able to do a plug-and-play for N10,000.
My dream is to make renewable energy affordable for every Nigerian. Just at a twitch of your finger and you have your electricity through the smart metering system, smart grid solution. Like in Kenya, your electricity is on your phone. You just press the keyboard and you have what you need. My dream is to see every Nigerian go green. Everyone should be able to own renewable energy devices. In the Republic of Benin, the women are using biogas to cook. In Cotonou, almost every home has it.
Are these devices accessible?
Everything you need in the name of renewable energy is available
What other things do you do?
I am also into capacity building which is really my forte. I sell my intellectual property to banks. Every year, I organize trainings for bankers in Renewable Energy for Sustainability.