Bio-energy Revolution in Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello
University Zaria Leads the Pace
In the event of fire outbreak, an
involuntarily action of every sensible person is to bring water to quench it,
what if the water catches fire? In this case, what one needs to do to address
the situation is beyond the sensibility of an ordinary person. It is a
situation when water is being made to release heat energy in form of fire. It
is simply a product of science and technology. My readers may remember one of
my articles on vehicle using water instead of petrol to energize it. The article
was published in June, 2016, which reported the breakthrough of an Israeli company for developing a
unique technology that uses metal, air and water to power a vehicle. The
technology has enormous potential for revolutionizing the world’s use of energy
from water, which geographers say occupies over 70 % of the earth’s surface.
The uniqueness of this technology is that instead of vehicle owners refilling
their tank with petrol every several hundred kilometers distance travel, or
having to recharge or exchange a battery in case of electric/solar vehicles,
the only necessary ingredient for refueling the vehicle is water- a commodity,
abundantly available, and of course, much cheaper than petroleum products. When
this technology is perfected, it will certainly make vehicles operation highly
cost-efficient. Other equally efficient and environmentally friendly source of
energy is the bio-energy, which is obtained from biogas as alternative to
petroleum. This alternative source of energy is gradually coming to Nigeria;
Ahmadu Bello University Zaria is in the forefront for championing this noble
cause.
Ahmadu Bello University Zaria is one of the first generation
universities in Nigeria. It was established in 1962 by the Government of the
then Northern Region of Nigeria to impart knowledge and learning to men and
women of all races without distinction on the grounds of race, religious or
political beliefs. The founding fathers expected the University to aspire
to the highest international ideals of scholarship and to provide learning of a
standard required and expected of a university of the highest standing while
reflecting the needs, the traditions, and the social and intellectual heritage
of the society in which it is located. The University was taken over by the
Federal Government of Nigeria in 1975 and has since then assum a national
mandate although its ties with the 19 states created out of the former Northern
Region remain very strong and ever glued
In the
over forty years of its existence, ABU has grown to become the largest, and the
most influential and diverse university in Nigeria. It consists of over 100
Academic Departments, twelve Faculties, and twelve Research Institutes and
Specialized Centres. The University offers undergraduate and postgraduate
courses in diverse fields of Agriculture, Public and Business Administration,
Engineering, Environmental Design, Education, Biological and Physical Sciences,
Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Humanities, Law and Social Sciences.
The university has two campuses; Samaru and Kongo covering an estimated area of
7,000 hectares of land. Another unique
feature of the University, as opposed to other Institutions of its type in
Nigeria, is that it has both staff and students from all nooks and cranny of Nigeria,
neighboring countries and few other countries across the continents. The
university alumni cut across the social classes from former Nigerian President,
Vice President, serving and former governors/Deputy governors of virtually all
the 36 governors plus Federal Capital Territory, Abuja down to hundreds of
local government councilors and ordinary graduates of different specializations
nationwide.
The motivation for ABU to source for
alternative energy came from the university’s desire to drastically reduce the
monthly electricity bill being paid to PHCN. The bill runs to tens of millions
of Naira, which is hardly affordable and certainly unsustainable to this giant
citadel of learning in the face of academic recession. This is why the Vice
Chancellor, Professor Ibrahim Garba is inexorably exploring all avenues to make
the university self sufficient in power generation and even supply to the
surrounding communities at a “give away price” as part of the university’s corporate
social responsibility. The university is pursuing three of such efforts
vigorously. The first one is the Nigeria-German Energy Partnership for the construction of 10
Mega watts from solar energy source. This is being implemented with a financial
assistance from Tertiary Education Trust Fund. The
second one is through a collaborative project with a Hungarian firm;
Agrar-Biothanol Company to generate power from farm produce and human waste (faeces). The ABU- Agrar-Biothanol Company project targets to produce
2.66 million litres of ethanol per annum, 1,333 tons of liquid organic
fertilizer per annum and 1.2 Mega watts of electricity. The third equally
important effort is ABU-BIONAS project whose Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the university and BIONAS, a Malaysian Firm,
were signed two weeks ago. The company will work with the university
intelligentsia to produce and train students and entrepreneurs on renewable
energy technology transfer to industries. These are initiatives of the Vice
Chancellor immediately after resumption of office in 2015 when he was welcomed
by the mounting challenge of paying sky-rocketed electricity bill of over 80
million Naira monthly. He was quoted during a
groundbreaking ceremony of one of these laudable projects at the university’s
main campus in Samaru saying, “that independent power generation became
imperative and necessary to the university because ABU could not sustain the
N86 million monthly electricity bills. ABU seeks to address these issues by
building a bio-ethanol and biogas plant for the benefits of the university and
the surrounding communities”. Before these recent
efforts, one of the units of the University, National Agricultural Extension
and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS) in 2014 constructed on bio-gas digester
in Nasarawan Buhari village, one of the adopted villages of NAERLS.
As written in one of my articles titled
“NAERLS – WAAPP (Nigeria) – GAWAL Collaborative Effort: Pushing Biogas
Technology in Nigeria”. It was mentioned that in Nigeria, the biogas
technology was limited to research works in Universities and Research Centres
where its generation and use were investigated, verified and in most cases kept
on shelves. However, an effort was made by West Africa Agricultural
Productivity Programme (WAAPP-Nigeria) and NAERLS of Ahmadu Bello University
Zaria to disseminate the biogas technology to farmers in Nigeria. Already,
biogas digesters were built in Enugu, Ondo, Edo, Kwara, Oyo, Plateau states and
Abuja for the biogas production. The plants are working efficiently. These digesters
were built with active participation of rural dwellers, notably farmers. The
idea was to pass the awareness and the knowledge of the technology to the
beneficiaries thereby increasing its adoption. That was how the digester was
built and tested to the admiration of the people of Nasarawan Buhari and their
then Giwa Local Government Chairman. That effort would have gone far and
Nigeria would have been reaping the benefits of biogas technology but for
lackadaisical attitude of then government at both state and local government
levels. The biogas technology is today famous in China and India because of the
high energy for small-scale industries and domestic requirements of the
population especially in the rural areas. The Chinese people discovered they
need great amount of energy to run many of their country-side (cottage)
industries at the minimal cost in order to break even. Thus, the
intensification of research in this area by the Chinese government: the efforts
have today yielded the result of a bio organically managed gas generation
technology.
The
ABU efforts in addressing its energy bill has necessitated the university to
lead the country for accessing alternative source of energy at the same time
championing bio energy revolution in Nigeria. What is the prospect of ABU
succeeding? (To be continued next week)
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