The supervising Minister of Information, Nurudeen Mohammed told State House journalists on the outcome of the weekly FEC meeting presided over by Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo.
He said the approval was based on a memo seeking the council’s ratification of President Goodluck Jonathan’s anticipatory approval for the award of contract for the procurement of 750,000 units of clean cooking stove and 18,000 wonder bags for the National Clean Cooking Scheme.
Mohammed said the contract was awarded to Messrs Integral Renewable Energy Services Ltd in the sum of N9,287,250,000.00 inclusive of Value Added Tax (VAT) with a delivery period of 12 weeks.
He described the scheme as an aggressive drive to engender clean cooking culture amongst the poor rural women as well as reduce and eliminate cooking with solid fossil which, he said, is detrimental to health.
According to the minister, the scheme is expected to provide 20 million clean stoves over a five-year period at the rate of four million stoves per annum which will be distributed free of charge.
“It (the contract) will also reduce incessant felling of trees which exposes the nation to ecological problems. Furthermore, additional benefit to Nigeria in switching over to this technology by the rural households is the carbon credits arising from the registration by the UNFCCC. The country stands to gain 50 percent subsidy of the price through the generated carbon credits”, he said.
Mohammed further explained that, the FEC unanimously ratified Jonathan’s approval for the contract as it noted that the stoves would be locally assembled and provide jobs to Nigerians among other benefits.
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