A petroleum expert, Bala Zaka, has said that affordable and efficient energy is more necessary for businesses than infrastructure.
Zaka, who is also a Technical Director at Template Design Limited, made this known in an interview with The PUNCH.
According to him, the removal of subsidies on petroleum products will kill businesses that are already groaning.
He said, “In fact, let me say this, a lot of people don’t know that what we need is energy and not infrastructure. Many of them keep saying we need infrastructure and that we need to save money for infrastructure. But if you construct the infrastructure and there is no energy, will the infrastructure be useful?
“If you construct hospitals, schools, laboratories, recreation centres, etc, and there is no energy, in this case, electricity or power to drive those places, will they be useful? Who will work in the hospital, labs and others if there is no energy to power them?
“So people keep making mistakes by thinking that it is the infrastructure that we need. You need energy first! And when there is energy, young people can be creative, they can do so many things for themselves, even if it means using the Internet and working online. Once there is no energy, nothing will work.
“So again, the biggest mistake that many people make is that they think we need infrastructure before energy; no! However, it is only infrastructures for energy such as refineries and power plants that you need. Not roads and the likes, for if you construct all the roads and there is no electricity, what are you constructing? It will be useless.”
