Collapse of electricity, fuel supply worsen poverty in Kano
The incidence of poverty, which has been identified by analysts as one of the critical factors fuelling under-development in Kano State, has continue to mount in the recent times.
Kano, one of the most populous states in Nigeria, with over 10 million people, is said to be experiencing the worse poverty incidence in the country.
Facts gathered by BusinessDay from the Kano State Office of Statistic indicate that about 75 percent of the residents are at the moment living in acute material poverty.
According to the data, the incidence of poverty has shot up by as much as 10 percent in the past one year, attributable to the near collapse of basic social infrastructure, particularly, electricity supply.
Kano, which has a total electricity demand of over 500 megawatt, is at the time of filing this report, being supplied with less than 70 percent from the national grid by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
As a result of this development, productive activities, especially those driven by electricity have continued to suffer because of the persistent power outrages the state is experiencing.
Many of the businesses that were forced to provide alternative source of power in order to keep afloat, are now further being pushed out of operation by the current fuel scarcity.
With most of the large, medium, and small-scale productive enterprises in crisis, a greater percentage of the residents of the state are not economically engaged, thus worsening the poverty rate.
Meanwhile, the Kano state council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), has at the end of its monthly congress meeting held at the weekend, called on the Federal Government to urgently find lasting solution to the lingering energy crisis being experienced in the country.
The union observed with dismay that the energy crisis, particularly, the prevailing fuel scarcity is at the point of grounding socio-economic activities in the state, and appealed to government to tackle the problem.
In the same vein, the diminishing status of Kano, as an active industrial centre, is best explained by the current dysfunctional state of Bompai Industrial Estate, one of the six industrial enclaves in the ancient city.
Bompai, an entity that once symbolise the height of industrial attainment of the people of state, was conceived in the early 1950s, as a manufacturing hub for the entire northern Nigeria.
The establishment of the estate, experts said was the first practical step taken by the government of the defunct northern region to grow the economy of the region from its dominant agrarian nature to full-scale industrial manufacturing.
The once vibrant industrial enclave situated on a large span of land in the metropolitan district of the state, has decayed from being an active host of clusters of small, and medium scale manufacturing concerns, to a graveyard of machinery.
According to observation, the Estate which used to chunk out different kinds of consumables such as: Vegetable oil, Confectionaries, leather products, is at the moment a shadow of it former self, with weeds taking over the sites of most of the once active industries.
The dormancy of the estate, as a result of the closure of the most of the manufacturing companies located there, has led to the sacking of more 100,000 labour hands it once employed.
The down turn in activities in the estate, had been confirmed by the result of Census of Industries, conducted by the Kano state ministry of commerce, industry, co-operative and tourism, which was made public recently.