Okonjo-Iweala who rolled out the statistics to back up her claims during a lecture she presented on how to tackle infrastructure deficit, said she did not care if the figures would cause ripples in the country.
Apparently referring to the recent uproar caused by the comment made by the Central Bank Governor on the jumbo pay of federal lawmakers, she said: “Let me talk of how we compare with other G20 countries.
Electricity consumption per capita here in Nigeria in 2009 was 106 kilowatts. This is compared to 443 kilowatts for India, 2,443 kilowatts per capita for China, and 4,921 for South Africa.
“Nigeria generates about 4,000 megawatts of electricity for 150 million people; South Africa generates 45,000 megawatts for 49 million people. Indonesia generates 30,900 megawatts for its 200 million plus people. South Africa though is generating 45,000 has just come to the World Bank for one of the biggest loans of over $3.5 billion that the World Bank ever made.
“They are generating 45,000, we are generating 4,000 but they are not happy they are falling behind and they are investing billions of dollars into power generation because they recognize that their industries and their households cannot move forward without it.
“We are also lagging seriously behind in rail transportation. On access to water and sanitation, we are again lagging behind, so Nigeria’s overwhelming infrastructure deficit is very costly for job creation and growth.”
She added: “According to a recent World Bank study on competitive business, the absence of adequate infrastructure in Nigeria has a massive 16 percent to business cost per unit to use compared to say two percent in South Africa, five percent in China and 10 percent in India. So how are we going to compete when we have such a drawback for our business, 16 percent far and above in excess cost compared to other countries? So this is where we are.
“We want to be a giant, we want to sit at a table with the G20; we want to be seen as a leading economy 20 years from now but the point I am making is that we have to sit back and say where are we today compared to those countries that we want to sit with? And what we have to do about it. Now, while these figures should not cause despondency or maybe they should, is to certainly make us stop and think very hard.
"We need to get serious, they should make us think of about how we get serious about these basic infrastructure."
Okonjo-Iweala, however, noted that the country was making progress in the area of information and communication technology, ICT.
Stressing that this was also part of infrastructure, she added that this was the infrastructure of the future “and we are making some good progress here.”
Source: Vanguard Nigeria
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