Nigeria’s Nuclear Dementia: Why Is the Giant of Africa Content to Grovel in Darkness?

As the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, makes his triumphant tour of our continent, inking pacts to illuminate the Pyramids with the atom's fire, one is forced to confront the profound stupor that has befallen the Tinubu leadership in Nigeria, especially in its foreign policy sphere, which, to all intent, is comatose.

Egypt, despite being ruled by a military dictator, is, with the pragmatism of a nation serious about its future, forging ahead with the colossal El-Dabaa nuclear plant, a 4.8-gigawatt behemoth built by Russia’s Rosatom, which will soon power its industrial renaissance.

Meanwhile, South Africa, despite its own undeniable manifold problems, continues to harvest the fruit of the Koeberg facility, keeping it atop the continent's electricity production pyramid with an annual output of 244,383 GWh.

Even Djibouti and Burkina Faso are showing interest in deploying nuclear power plants.

And what of Nigeria? The supposed "Giant of Africa" languishes in a distant fifth place, generating a paltry 41,000 GWh annually for a population exceeding 200 million.

The state of Nigeria’s electricity system is not just a failure of policy; it is a national disgrace of monumental proportions.

For a country so blessed with resources, this energy poverty is the single greatest albatross around the nation’s neck, strangulating every artery of national development.

Money devoted to the sector in the budget always vamoose into corruption paradise, including US$16 billion allegedly squandered under Obasanjo.

The parlous state of this sector is the starkest evidence of Nigeria’s national schizophrenia: a comprador elite that understands the value of the barrel of oil but remains utterly oblivious to the kilowatt-hour.

How can Nigeria speak of industrialization, of technological advancement, of creating a modern economy, when factories are forced to rely on the infernal noise and expense of diesel generators, adding a staggering 40% to the cost of locally manufactured goods?

The Nigerian economy is bleeding profusely from a thousand cuts, all inflicted by the inability to guarantee a stable, reliable, and abundant supply of electricity. That is what the Chinese and the Russians did.

Nigerians should not shrug this off as an inconvenience; it is the foundational barrier to any meaningful national development.

The country’s refusal to even seriously consider the nuclear option, while rivals embrace it with gusto, is a decision steeped in a myopic and self-defeating neocolonial mindset.

The West, in its typical condescension, whispers sweet nothings about renewable energy and the “dangers” of nuclear power, conveniently forgetting that they achieved their own prosperity on a bedrock of cheap, abundant, and often dirty energy.

Nigeria’s plantation supervisors, in foolish allegiance to their colonial masters’ outdated dogmas, listen. These misrulers remain eternal supplicants, begging for solar panels and gas turbines while the Russians, the Chinese, and the Koreans offer a genuine path to energy sovereignty.

The inability to see far is the tragedy of the African elite: we have been so thoroughly conditioned to look to our former colonial masters for approval that we have lost the capacity for strategic thought.

We prefer to be managers of poverty rather than architects of a prosperous future.

To myopic Nigerian leaders, I say this: jettison this servile, unipolar mentality. The world is now a multi-vector arena; a country of Nigeria’s potential must learn to dance with all who invite it to the dancing hall.

Energy, especially cheap energy, is the lifeblood of a modern state, and we must pursue it with the ruthlessness of a surgeon cutting out a cancer.

We in Africa must learn to balance our foreign policy with the dexterity of a grandmaster. We should engage the Russians, court the Chinese, keep the Americans close, but never, ever allow our strategic autonomy to be compromised by a sentimental or stupid allegiance to any single power.

Nigeria, the most populous Black nation, has no business being the appendage or vassal to any power.

The path to our salvation and greatness lies in breaking these psychological chains and embracing the pragmatic, unromantic, and decisive pursuit of power, in every sense of the word.

Until we do, we are condemned to remain the continent's greatest underachiever, a land of potential perpetually betrayed by the visionless pygmies we call our leaders.

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)

Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FemiAkomolafe

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