By Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik, PhD
Norway is an oil producing country that is seriously encouraging the use of electric vehicles over fossil vehicles in the country since 1990s. To encourage EV patronage, there are a lot of incentives on Electric Vehicles (zero-emission vehicles) such as, exemption from import duty, 25% VAT exemption, annual road tax exemption, 50% toll charge exemption, etc. The Norwegian Parliament put up a national goal that all new cars sold by 2025 should be zero-emission (electric or hydrogen). They called it very ambitious but a feasible goal with the right policy measures. And by the end of 2020, there were more than 330.000 registered battery electric cars (BEVs) in Norway.
An electric car manufacturer was at NTNU Trondheim for exhibition in 2014 and there was a raffle draw and the winners got the car to use for a week for free. As at the time i was there between 2013 and 2015, NTNU had about 3 electric cars that staff of the university can book to use for free within an hour or so. No favoritism. You just get to the webpage and make your booking and the car is yours for the period you booked for. All these are to encourage people to patronize electric vehicles.
The intracity buses in Norway are battery electric vehicles. My landlord bought an electric car in 2015. He was happily telling me the economic advantages of his new electric car over his fossil car. Now they purchase more of electric cars than fossil cars in Norway and one of the manufacturers of electric cars is the world’s richest man.
But why will an oil producing country encourage her people to patronize vehicles that use not the oil, a resources they have got in large quantity and even want to phase out the purchase of new fossil vehicles by 2025? They have leaders with foresight that have already prepared them for a life without fossil fuel cars using what they have earned from their oil, a journey they started since 1990s. They have possibly invested their oil money in other sectors such that a life without petrol and diesel will not affect their economy.
What about Nigeria? It is obvious that a life without petrol and diesel is fast approaching. How prepared are we without oil? How well has the huge money realized from oil all these years been invested in other sectors that are potential sources of forex? We can’t even produce enough electricity to aid the industrialization of our country. We can’t even properly fund the education of the people even though the kids of the political elites go abroad for proper education, thanks to the state resources. We can’t even make provision for basic healthcare services for the people that is also good enough for the political elites and their family members to save the money taken abroad for medical tourism.
Each month, we sit in Abuja at FAAC to share money among the states and the Emperors in the respective states do as they wish with it. The respective State Assemblies are in their pockets and can’t ask many questions. The Emperors, the people around them, and their respective family members live large and the masses live in abject poverty without jobs. And funny enough, the reactions of the people to the activities of the Emperors is mostly a function of where our loyalty lies at that moment or based on emotions.
So, how long can we sustain this sharing as the era of crude oil decline? How long can we sustain this expensive democracy with the consistent decline in revenue? Can the increasing tax burden on the already impoverished people solve the problems?
Our leaders need to put on a thinking cap.
©Amoka
