Issues
Govt Should Explore Alternative Energy Sources -Don
After spending more than a decade in the field working for some reputable multinational firms, it is hardly the case that any Nigerian would willingly opt to join the faculty of any of the nation’s beleaguered tertiary institutions where teachers are in a near perennial tug-of-war against the government over salaries and poor funding.
But that was the exact path toed by Dr. Chibuogwu Eze, an Enugu State-born scholar and senior research fellow at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology (RSUST), Port Harcourt.
In this interview with The Tide’s Business Editor, Ibelema Jumbo and Senior Reporter, Ike Wigodo, the varsity don advises government on non-fossil fuel resources and better waste management methods, among other issues. Excerpt:
Professional Background
My name is Dr Chibuogwu L. Eze. I have a Ph.D in Applied Geophysics. I read Geology first degree and read Applied Geophysics for my Masters degree and Ph.D.
Every of my degree is from Nigeria. My first degree is from the University of Calabar. I started my university education in 1978 and got a degree in 1982, then in 1985, I got a masters degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and in 1999, I got a Ph.D from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt.
I started working after obtaining a Masters degree. My first work experience was in a solid mineral exploration company, Rock View Nigeria Ltd, with headquarters in Paris but had a local office in Jos, Plateau State. I later left Rock View and joined a sister company, Rock View-Slovak. Rock Slovak was a joint venture with Rock View. It was owned by the Czech government.
The good thing I had during the time I worked was that I stayed briefly in 35 out of the 36 states of the federation. I think as a geologist, I have had so much experience in solid mineral exploration; I wished and prayed that I could also have experience in the oil mineral industry. In 1992, I was able to actualise that, when I joined an American oil exploration company, Western Geophysical, based here in Port Harcourt. I had another wish and prayer that I could take the skill back to the university and train younger geologists. Again, in 1995, that was actualised. On my own, I left oil exploration and joined the Rivers State University of Science and Technology where I still work as a senior research fellow in the Institute of Geosciences and Space Technology.
I joined Western Geophysical Oil Services in 1992 and we started oil exploration and I did that extensively. There is hardly any creek in Rivers and Bayelsa States that I have not stayed. I am yet to see one, but the quest for oil in the Chad basin was not significant. In 1992 when I joined Western Geophysical as an explorer, people were not having this interest in the Chad basin as we have it today, so there were virtually no activities then.
The Chad basin oil explorers came later when we had left. Now, I think of going there also because a lot of younger ones I have trained are exploring there and I feel for two reasons to go to Bornu, so that I can complete the states. I have been to 35 states of the country except Bornu State. In respect of where oil activity is going on I would like to be there.
Possibility of oil find in Chad Basin
Every sedimentary basin in this world has a potential of having oil. So, once you have a sedimentary soil don’t ignore it, do oil exploration there, but among the sedimentary basins, the deltas have the highest potential and so if you have so many sedimentary basins, the good wisdom is that you start with the deltas and, in Nigeria, we have the Niger Delta. Nigeria has about seven sedimentary basins, so from the time we move from Chad basin, we have others; for example, the Anambra basin. And as I speak to you, we have many oil connections on these basins, so there are possibilities of finding oil in the Chad basin and there are possibilities of finding oil in the remaining five or six basins.
Founding of Transparent Earth Nigeria
In 2000, I founded a company called Transparent Earth Nigeria Ltd. The company does just basically two things: carry out environmental studies and safety training. And up till this moment, I’m still the chairman of this company and my wife, Dr. (Mrs) Evelyn Eze who also is a university teacher like me is a director. My wife is a lecturer at Madonna University. We have four directors which means that these people have contributed their monies to get this business started. So, the company is not just me and my wife, but I mentioned my wife because she is my wife and secondly, she takes active part in the day-to-day running of the business and since we started, God has blessed us. Our clients are numerous and run through the oil industry, mainly.
Government patronage
Honestly, Transparent Earth has not received any direct patronage from the government. Whatever we got from the public sector may have been from indirect sources. However, as a university lecturer, I have done a work that should serve this country. I did a research on alternative ways of getting energy, because energy is a critical issue for our country. The research took me 11 years and I came out with a book published by Macmillan. The book is called Alternative Energy Resources (with comments on Nigeria’s position) and the forward of that book was written by the then Minister of Power and now Governor of Cross River State, Sen. Liyel Imoke. He wrote in his capacity as a minister because it was a national issue. And the then Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi (now governor) also played a very significant role. He was the chief host. I will never forget it. In fact, I wish it would have been possible for me to physically go and thank him. But outside this, it was Sen. Imoke who wrote four personal letters to encourage me. And for me, a university teacher, reading such letters from people who were more highly placed than me was an encouragement, which is why I spent 11 years doing this research with my own money.
On alternative energy sources
We can get electricity from any of the eight alternative energy sources mentioned in my book; namely, Biomass, Geothermal Energy, Hydropower, Nuclear Energy, Solar Energy, Tidal Energy, Wave energy and Wind Energy. But I advised that we should start from the simplest, the one called Biomass. Biomass is getting electricity from what we call rubbish, the very type that blocks our drainages on Ikwerre and Aba Roads here in Port Harcourt. If you go to Sau Paulo in Brazil, the fuel sold at the filling stations is not from crude oil, it comes from rubbish.
After this research publication, the onus now lies on the government to actualise this dream. And I’m still challenging them to do something.
In fact, when I wanted to demonstrate the simplicity of biomass as an energy resource, I looked around and there was this young man who was interested in getting things done in Rivers State. I’m talking of Ipalibo Harry, a one-time chairman of the Rivers State Environmental Sanitation Authority. He has a Ph.D now and he was going to do a research then, so I tried to talk him into at least joining me to demonstrate to the world that what I did here is true. But I lacked the money to do it alone.
I told Ipalibo Harry, I know you are a very resourceful son of this state and I had already designed how this project can be done. And he spent a whopping two million naira to construct it the way I wanted. When we did what we did we were able to get fertilizer to grow corn. I invited people to come and see the fertilizers and the big people who came to see the fertilizer appreciated it so much that they could take it and start playing with it in their hands until it was question time. They were still holding and admiring it when they asked to know what it was made from. And as I said the word shit, they so much threw it away that some of it fell on me.
But I can tell you, I am talking about practical things. What is Biomass? Biomass is energy from plants and animals.
With money now available, I suggested that we start by putting to use the human faeces which we pass out on daily basis. I said to him, let’s put it into use and demonstrate to this country that it is possible. It was then that I realized that Rivers people, and this is not peculiar to Rivers State only, that Nigerian government approves areas for the dumping of shit.
Port Harcourt has four approved shit dumps. Then, why do we waste money building septic tanks if at the end of everything, such waste is evacuated to a dump in the bush. That is why I said in one of the conferences I attended that every Nigerian shits in the bush, including top government officials.
Waste-to-Wealth
The waste coming out in tonnes is being wasted and we are using it to kill ourselves. My appeal to the Rivers State Government is that collectively we can do something with this waste. I am willing to contribute; knowledge does not belong to one man alone. Then coming to the other, as a university teacher, I train students on waste management which is not confined to the one in my book. This is not a classroom, but I will give you the two ends of it.
In waste management, the worst thing to do is what is now being practised everywhere. It is called the Open Dump system. The best thing to do is to reduce waste. Reduction means trying not to generate waste at all. And if you ask me how this is possible in this part of the world, I will simply say that we cannot eliminate it, but we can reduce the waste we generate by an appreciable quantity. When I teach my students in the university, I usually ask if they had ever bought a bucket of custard. If you buy custard, by the time you open it you will discover that the quantity of custard hardly justifies the size of its container. That is not in the spirit of waste reduction. I am just giving an example, the international community has advised that we have fit packaging, so that whatever you use in packaging a product should be almost the same size with the product itself.
The second stage is recycling. When you see people coming to buy scraps, what they are doing is a form of waste management. Converting waste to wealth is recycling those scraps. Waste recycling is practised in every part of the world and it is very, very important.
Even at the home level, you practice waste reuse which is the forth ladder, waste reuse is when you store water in a drum which had been emptied of its original content. This means that an empty drum which ordinarily should have become a waste is now serving another useful purpose.
There is a caveat, however. Eating food is something good, but you shouldn’t eat poisoned food. The public must be educated on the kind of things that can be re-used. If a drum, or any other container for that matter, had been used to import toxic chemicals, the importer should be kind enough to, after removing the chemical content, perforate the drum. On this particular issue, I wish I can go to Government House, not to be a governor, but to have the power; I need it for one week, because I am angry about this issue you raised, but for one reason or the other, these are not being implemented, so you asked a vital question, not every container should be re-used. And, it lies on the experts I am also one to know which that cannot be used and the proper thing to do is as you remove the container, you perforate and send to the people who should dispose of it. Hazardous items should not be disposed the way we dispose of other things. There are people licensed to dispose of hazardous materials. Government gives them licences and such things should not go anywhere except to those who are licensed to dispose of such wastes.
On kerosene explosion
Thanks for giving me this opportunity. Some people may be angry with my position, but you said the other causes of kerosene explosion are already known. Moving your stove when it is on can cause kerosene explosion. Don’t move your stove when it is burning.
Another cause of kerosene explosion is mixing kerosene with a more volatile component of hydro carbon which, in many cases, does not happen in the house of the victim.
The mixing of kerosene with a more volatile component happens somewhere at a higher level and, in some cases, when it happens at such level, someone in authority knows what has happened but decides to ignore it for financial reasons.
Assuming your business is to import petrol, kerosene and diesel, you have imported and you want to load them differently into their respective tanks and something happened along the line where the tank used for petrol was loaded with kerosene, this mix- up at this stage would be a sufficient reason to condemn the entire product; but being a businessman, you wouldn’t want to waste millions of naira, all you are likely to do is pray over it and push the product to the market, and because these products have different distillation points, it is sold as kerosene.
This is an open letter to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Nyesom Wike.
Your Excellency,
Sir, ordinarily, I would not be writing an open letter to you, but like a wise man once said, “Silence would be Treason.” So I prefer to stay alive than face the consequences of silence in the face of crime. With each passing day, and as the socio-political tides continue to turn, it has become more pertinent that more people speak up in a concerted MANNER to prevent the death of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as we appear to be, in the words of W. B. Yeats, “turning and turning in the widening gyre” heading for an end where the falcon will no longer hear the falconer
It is unfortunate that since losing control of the Federal Government, with the loss of President Goodluck Jonathan at the poll in 2015, our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has continued on a downward spiral. It is much more painful, that where it is expected that leaders within the party should rise to the challenge and put an end to this decline of our great party, some have instead taken up roles as its undertaker.
It will be hypocritical to claim aloofness to what I believe is your grouse with the PDP and I am not a hypocrite. It will be uncharitable on my part to discountenance the role you have played in strengthening the PDP from 2015 up until the last Presidential primaries of the party. It is my belief that your grouse against certain members of the party who you perceived worked against the party and abandoned it in 2015 and then came around much later to take control of the party, is justified. Also know that your decision to remain in the Party and stifle its progress on the other hand, as a sort of payback, stands condemned. For a man of your pedigree and stature, it is a dishonorable act, highly dishonorable and stands as testimony against all you claim to stand for.
At least, it can be argued that those who you hold this grudge against, abandoned the party completely and did not sit back while actively working to destroy it from within. But what then can be the argument on your own part, seeing that those you are currently working with against your party are the same people who set in motion, and executed surgically, the plans that not only ended our Party’s leadership at the centre, but ended up dislodging the first Niger Deltan to occupy Aso Rock as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Is this not akin to “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?” That will be worse than folly. Let us not throw away the baby with the bath water because we do not like the soap used in bathing the baby. It will be a grave mistake.
Honourable Minister, sir, it is rather unfortunate that of all people, you have also decided to play the role of an undertaker not only for our party, but for our dear Rivers State.
I will like to take you down memory lane a little. Let me remind you of your emergence as Guber candidate of the PDP in Rivers State, against all fairness and justice in 2014. You will remember that despite the reality being that you as an Ikwerre man was poised to replace a fellow Ikwerre man in Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in our multiethnic state, Rivers people overwhelmingly stood by you and pushed for your emergence as Executive Governor of Rivers State in 2015. I dare say that your popularity in the entire Niger Delta region was at an all-time high at this point.
I want you to understand why you were loved across board leading to your eventual emergence as Governor of Rivers State in 2015; it was because when it looked like all were against the second term ambitions of the first Niger Delta man to emerge as President of Nigeria, you became not just a pillar but a beacon of resistance by standing for Goodluck Jonathan. Rivers people, as grateful and rewarding as they can be, paid you back by ensuring your electoral victory against the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) led by your predecessor. On your emergence, where there were second term Governors in the region, you, a first term Governor, was seen by the people as not just the leader of the PDP, but the leader of the entire Niger Delta region. You earned it, and no one could dispute it.
In 2019, when your re-election bid was being challenged ferociously, Rivers people once again stood solidly behind you. Many were killed in the process of defending your votes. Do you remember Dr. Ferry Gberegbe that was shot and killed while trying to protect your votes in Khana Local Government Area? There are many more unnamed and unrecognised sons and daughters of Rivers State who sacrificed their lives so that you could emerge as a second term Governor of Rivers State.
In 2022/23, Honourable Minister, you oversaw a party primary across board that saw some candidates imprisoned and internal party democracy jettisoned for your wishes, leading to the emergence of flag bearers of our party all singlehandedly picked by you. You have on more than one occasion publicly stated that you paid for all their forms. Even those shortchanged in this process licked their wounds and continued to play their roles as party members to ensure the success of the party at all levels. In what will go down as one of the most keenly contested elections in recent Rivers history, with formidable candidates like Senator Magnus Abe of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Mr Tonye Cole of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the vibrant youth driven Labour Party (LP), PDP emerged victorious across board except for Phalga Constituency 1 that was lost to the Labour Party. (Not that you did not loose in some other LGA’s but let’s stick to the official figures declared by INEC).
It begs the question, why then do you want to burn down Rivers State, when everyone who now holds political office emerged through a process designed and endorsed by you? Is it that you do not care about Rivers people and you are all about yourself? If so, I am forced to believe that those around you are not telling you the truth. The truth being that in a state where your words were law; where houses and businesses could be demolished or closed down without any recourse to legalities, where Executive Orders could be deployed to stifle the opposition, that your popularity is now at an all-time low. Probably because they are afraid of you, or of losing the benefits they gain from you, they fail to tell you that what you might perceive as a battle against your successor, has slowly but gradually degenerating into a battle against Rivers State and Rivers people. You know, there is a popular saying that, a man can cook for the community and the community will finish the food, but when a community decides to cook for one man, the reverse is the case.
LEAVE FUBARA ALONE
You have gone on and on about being betrayed by Governor Siminalayi Fubara. You point fingers forgetting that some of those same fingers quick to spot betrayals point straight back at you. It is not Governor Fubara that has betrayed the PDP by working against it in the just concluded General Election, and working with the opposition at the State and Federal level to destabilise the party. It is you, Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that betrayed Rivers people by instigating a political crisis with propensity to escalate ethnic tensions in Rivers State. It is you Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that has declared himself God over all in Rivers State and has no qualms with burning the state to the ground to prove a point. It is you Honourable Minister. It is you Honourable Minister who told the world that the APC was a cancer and you can never support a cancerous party. It is you Honourable Minister who ended up facilitating the emergence of the same “cancerous” APC that has accelerated the economic decline of this country and further impoverished our people with no remorse. All so you can be a Minister of the Federal Capital Territory? The lack of self awareness is gobsmacking.
Some days back I came across a video where you talked about death and how you do not cry when you hear about the death of some people because you have no idea what might have caused it considering many a politician swear “over dead bodies” and still go back on their words. Those words made me think, and I could see the reason behind them. You see, in chosing to be God in the affairs of Rivers people, you have closed your eyes and ears to reason; you see nothing and hear nothing that can cause you to rethink on the path you have chosen. In your quest to “show Fubara” you have unwittingly united a vast majority of Rivers people behind him, so much that even those who despised him because of you, now like or love him, because of you too. In your scheming, I will advise you not to forget that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Note that the war which you have or are waging against Governor Fubara, has gone beyond being merely political as you might see in your minds eye. It is now one that, fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, has evolved into a war against Rivers people. It is good to point out that no one has taken a stand against Rivers people and won. No one has gone against God and won. In your defiant characteristic manner, it will be unfortunate if you believe your own hubris and that of those around you on the possibility of you being the first to successfully go against Rivers people. It will be a needless gamble; one where if you win you create more enemies for yourself than you can withstand on your political journey, and if you lose, your legacy becomes an inglorious and irredeemable one in Rivers State, the Niger Delta, and Nigeria at large. For your sake as regards posterity, it is my greatest wish that you have a moment of sobriety and a deep reflection and introspection on this path you have chosen.
Honourable Minister, sir, what is left of your legacy is on the brink of being completely desecrated and relegated to the dustbin of our political history, and it will be a sad end to what I will say has been a wonderful political career that many can only dream of. The ball is in your court, and may God Almighty have mercy on us all and forgive us for our shortcomings.
Gabriel Baritulem Pidomson
Dr Pidomson is former Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt and former member, Rivers State House of Assembly.
In 2015, I made a conscious decision to invest my financial resources, my time, and energy into supporting Nyesom Wike’s gubernatorial campaign. I poured my heart and soul into ensuring Nyesom Wike emerged victorious even at the risk of my personal safety.
Again in 2019, I doubled down on my commitment. I invested a significant amount of money to procure campaign outfits for all twenty-three Local Governments Areas of Rivers State. I spared no expense in supplementing Wike’s election efforts in my own local government, and once again putting myself at great risk to safeguard the fairness and transparency of the electoral process.
However, despite my unwavering loyalty and sacrifices, I found myself abandoned and forgotten by Wike. Throughout his eight-year tenure, he failed to acknowledge my contributions or fulfill his promises and agreements. Even as a former Deputy Governor, Wike denied me my severance benefit.
My investment in Wike’s governorship was not just financial – it was a commitment of passion, dedication, and belief in a better future for Rivers State. Yet, his leadership style of dishonesty, greed, drunkenness and rash abuse of senior citizens brought me nothing but disappointment, misery and losses.
By the grace of God, today I speak not as a victim, but as a hero. I have accepted my losses, and I have moved on. And as I reflect on my experience, I cannot help but urge Wike to do the same and allow peace and development to reign in Rivers State.
Nyesom Wike, when you speak of investing in Governor Sim Fubara’s election, remember those like me who also invested in you. Remember the sacrifices I made, the risks I took, and the promises and agreements you left unfulfilled.
It is time for you, Wike, to let go of the past and allow Governor Sim Fubara the breathing space he needs to lead Rivers State forward. Allow him to focus on the challenges of good governance and the aspirations of the people. Spare him these unwarranted and ill-conceived political manoeuvrings founded on personal agenda and not for general good of Rivers State and her people.
I may have lost my investment on Wike, but I have not lost hope in the future of Rivers State. And together, we will continue to strive for a brighter tomorrow.
Long Live the Governor to Rivers State, Sir Siminialayi Fubara!
Long Live the Good People of Rivers State!!
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!!!
Engr Ikuru is former Deputy Governor of Rivers State.
Tele Ikuru
