The President of African Development Bank, AfDA, Dr Akinwumi Adesina said the bank has invested about 258 million dollars in rehabilitation efforts in the Northeast region of the country.
Adesina, who met behind closed doors with President Muhammadu Buhari earlier on Tuesday, disclosed this while answering questions from State House correspondents after the meeting.
He said: “We have invested heavily in the northeast of Nigeria, we have put in almost 258 million dollars to support the rehabilitation both in terms of health, education, sanitation and water as a way of reviving areas that have been battered.’’
Adesina, disclosed also that the African Investment Forum organised by the bank in 2018, had succeeded in mobilizing about 38.7 billion dollars of investments to African, with about 7.1 billion dollars of the amount likely to be invested in Nigeria.
The AFDB President commended Buhari for his support to the bank, pledging the bank’s continued support to Nigeria in its efforts toward boosting power supply in the country.
He noted that the bank was in the era of increasing its capital and assured that when that was done, Africa would be better for it.
“We are in the period of general capital increase for the bank and with that support, we believe you will see a different Africa completely under this new general capital increase of the bank.
“One of the things that we said was that Nigeria’s contribution under the last general capital increase of the bank was 360 million dollars but we lent to Nigeria 4.5 billion dollars, almost 15.5 percent.
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“Every dollar that Nigeria gives to the bank, we lend 15 dollars in return, so it’s a great investment.
“I assured Mr. President that under the new general capital increase of the bank, we are talking to our investors about this, so if we get enough money, hundreds of people will be connected to electricity,’’ he stated.
He also had some words of advice on how Nigeria can deal with the perennial problem in the power sector, insisting that the tariff structure and liquidity constraints in the sector must be addressed.
“The country needs to get the tariff structure because if you don’t have good cost reflective tariff structure, investments from private sector becomes very difficult in the energy sector.
“We in the bank have invested over 400 million dollars in the transmission company of Nigeria to support it. But at the end of the day it’s to diversify the energy sector that we have.
“We have gas here, we should use a lot of those gas; we also have hydro and solar. The African Development Bank is investing heavily right now in the north, in the Jigawa area in solar projects.
“So, God is good to Africa and He gave us tremendous amount of sunshine, water, everything is good for Africa, all we need to do is take a cable and connect to the sun and we will be fine.
“So, we just have to optimize the renewable energy potential that we have,’’ Adesina said.
