By RhemDy News
President Bola Tinubu, on Tuesday, commissioned Barefoot Renewable Energy College, Osara, (BARECKS), and the Green Hydrogen Research and Demonstration Pilot Plant in Kogi State.
Commissioning the Africa's first renewable energy college, President Tinubu described the institution as a world-class edifice, completed to international standards.
Tinubu said while the difficulty confronting Nigeria which is abundantly endowed with sunlight, wind, biomass and water had been "converting its endowment into megawatts, and megawatts into jobs," that difficulty will now be addressed by the college.
Vice President Kashim Shettima who commissioned the college on behalf of the President at the Confluence University of Science and Technology, Osara, conveyed the President's greetings whom he said had taken satisfaction in the completion of the project.
He noted that the Nigerian leader had always maintained "that a government is measured by the industries it plants and by the households those industries feed."
Tinubu observed that with the Barefoot Renewable Energy College and the Green Hydrogen Research and Demonstration Pilot Plant now open for studies, the question about whose hands should build and maintain Africa's future has been answered.
"This is the first institution of its kind on the African continent, modelled on the celebrated vocational colleges of India that turned unlettered grandmothers into solar engineers.
"If that method could light the villages of Rajasthan, it can light the settlements of Kogi, Ondo and Cross River. Nigeria assumes, from today, the position of pacesetter in renewable energy capacity development across Africa," Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Communications in the
Office of the Vice President, Stanley Nkwocha, disclosed in a statement.
He stated that the college was built as a vocational and technical institution to close the widest gap in Africa's energy transition which, according to him, is the shortage of competent technical manpower.
"Our continent has never suffered a deficit of intention. We have suffered the scarcity of hands trained to execute them," he added, saying the college will produce technicians, installers, operators and maintenance professionals with practical competence in renewable energy technologies," the President said.
Tinubu added that graduates from the institution will earn internationally recognised certificates of proficiency to qualify them for employment.
He called on development partners, the private sector, international organisations and research institutions to join hands with the college to expand research, innovation and technical training," assuring that Nigeria is prepared to host and lead such collaboration.
President Tinubu applauded the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, and the Director General of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, who he said carried the project from the drawing board to the commissioning ceremony through their persistence.
He also commended Kogi State Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo, the government and people of Kogi State for providing the environment that made the project possible.
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