Recently, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo, said the Federal Government plans to establish an aircraft manufacturing firm in Nigeria.

Within that same period, the Permanent Secretary of Innovation, Science and Technology, Mrs. Esuabana Nko Asanye, also announced that Nigeria is to collaborate with the Republic of Russia in the areas of Space Technology, Agriculture, Science, Engineering, and Mathematics to strengthen the nation’s socio-economic development.

While we were still trying to understand the magic by which a country that cannot provide electricity for her engineering students in public universities to charge their phones could be talking of building aircraft and going to space, another ‘Alice in Wonderland’ landed: First AI University debuts in Nigeria!

From a reliable source, for instance, we gathered that an engineering student in Delta State University, Oleh campus, spends about N2,000 every week to charge his or her phone and power bank at one of the several commercial charging points which sprang up around the university community. Business men and women use petrol or diesel generators to provide electricity where the state and federal governments have failed to do so.

The same situation exists in almost all universities across Nigeria and in many communities. Nigeria’s leaders and engineers of tomorrow do not even have power to charge their phones. A government that cannot provide electricity for her citizens is dreaming of building aircraft, going to space and building Artificial Intelligence. What a ridiculous day-dreaming!

We were also told recently that the Federal Government has secured a $1.1 billion loan from African Development Bank to provide electricity for 5 million people by the end of 2026.

If that is true, we advise government to spend that money and other power budgets on solar power. Throwing more money into power Distribution Companies, DISCOs, Transmission Companies, TCN, and Generation Companies, GENCOs will be as few buckets of water poured on Sahara Desert.

These electricity companies in Nigeria are similar to the notorious former Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, NITEL, which showed Nigerians ‘pepper’ before the Global System of Mobile Communications, GSM, in form of ECONET (now Airtel), MTN and others came to the rescue of Nigerians.

For now, the only leeway out for Nigeria’s electricity crisis is solar power, especially with the endless power grid collapses. What is needed is the right Import tariffs on solar panels, batteries and other solar equipment.

Solar energy can be used to power homes, schools, industries, markets, and healthcare facilities. It can also be used to heat chicken brooders, incubate eggs and meet many other electricity needs of the people.

When schools, especially our engineering departments are powdered and empowered, they can in turn apply their brains and innovativeness to local manufacturing of solar panels, batteries and those other solar assesories. From there, they will begin to venture into building of aeroplanes and going to space.

There is no shortcut to space and aeronautics as our politicians tends to believe. (Vanguard Editorial)