Nigeria should beg Igbos not to go, because it has been forecast by a Stanford University economist Tony Seba that in the next 8 years, manufacture of petrol-powered cars will be phased out worldwide in place of electric cars. According to him, all the major oil producing countries in the world like Nigeria would be seriously hit by this industrial revolution. What has that got to do with the Igbos? 2 Major things.
1. Urgent Need To Create Level Playing Ground For The Industious Igbos To Build Startup Industries. Igbos Have The Capacity To Create Industries That Would Replace Petroleum As Major Foreign Exchange Earners. The Igbos have been known to create billion dollar industries from scratch, like Nollywood, Chinedu Echeruo’s Hotstop app, and other world beating products/services/industries. Rather than marginalize the Igbos, Nigeria should give them what they have always asked for, a level playing ground, so that they can create many things we can sell for foreign exchange.
I know the day our current recession really started. That day, we were browsing and saw where it was announced that Obama has dropped the ban on the US exploiting its crude oil. I immediately realized that recession may soon come, because the US was then buying 10% of its oil from Nigeria. I know some months when Nigeria couldnt find buyers for its barrels of oil, and the barrels remained unsold.
Even with that, most of Nigeria’s income still comes from crude oil sales. But let me tell you: if we don’t begin to seriously diversify, we may enter a much more serious recession in 8 years time. Just because the United States stopped buying crude oil from us and started producing its own oil, we have been shaking. Imagine what could happen when the world itself stops buying crude oil.
So, those artisans at Aba should be fully supported to build up their products, not just to supply the Nigerian market, but also to export to earn Nigeria more foreign exchange. We should take this Stanford professor seriously. Remember the biblical story of how the Egyptians avoided famine that came 7 years later. After Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream about 7 fat and 7 lean years, the Egyptians seriously began to prepare for the 7 lean years. And when that time came, the nations around that were consumed by famine even had to go to Egypt to import food.
This Stanford University Economist has told us what is likely to happen in 8 years time. Let us take him seriously and begin to prepare for our ‘lean’ years, when the world would dump petrol-powered cars and fully embrace electric-powered cars.
2. Urgent Need For Nigeria To Embrace Enugu’s Coal: Gas for electricity is always scarce. This has led to frequent electricity shortages in Nigeria – now that we are just using electricity to power our houses and factories. What would then happen in 8 years time when we begin to use electricity to power new transport vehicles, when petrol powered cars are phased out?
This is the time for the government to begin to build coal-fired power plants to
