Abuja, 07/11/2022 (MAP)- The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission is ready to « provide its full support » to the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project, highlighted in the royal speech on the occasion of the 47th anniversary of the Green March, ECOWAS Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy and Digitization, Sédiko Douka, said.
In a statement issued on Monday in Abuja, Douka underlined that « the ECOWAS Commission is fully supportive of this important project and will spare no effort in getting its Member States to fully embrace the project. »
« The ECOWAS Commission warmly welcomes the Authorities of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Federal Republic of Nigeria, first of all His Majesty King Mohammed VI and His Excellency President Muhammadu Buhari, for having had this vision of the future which will definitively consecrate the energy independence of our region and strengthen South-South cooperation, » he stressed.
He said that the statutory bodies of the project, namely, the Steering Committee and the Technical Committee « will meet shortly for its implementation. »
« This gigantic project comes at the right time, because the deficit in energy production means is one of the critical challenges of the ECOWAS region. Indeed, our energy demand is covered at only 60%, with an expensive tariff of around 0.24 USD/kWh and a low access rate of 53%, » he explained.
« The project will enable our natural gas producing member states (Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mauritania) to benefit from the use of this fuel for power generation and the use of domestic gas, the use of which is also low, » the ECOWAS Commissioner said, adding that this is consistent with the 2019-2033 Master Plan for the development of regional means of production and transport of electrical energy adopted in December 2018 by the Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS which advocates for the generation of 16,000 MW in the region including a high proportion of natural gas as fuel.
