Why Nigeria Should Only Export Its Uranium For Now

Minister Kayode Fayemi is pushing for Nigeria to begin using its uranium to generate electricity. That’s a wrong move because as at this moment, Nigeria does have adequate maintenance culture to utilize nuclear energy.

Uranium is not something to dabble into just because foreign investors/nuclear industry special interests come and dangle a few carrots on our face. It is so dangerous that a minor accident at a uranium enrichment plant can affect many states as quickly as the wind can carry uranium’s cancer causing properties. 

The bitter truth Mr Fayemi should remember is that in this country, we don’t yet have the strong maintenance and accountability culture that can prevent careless nuclear accidents.

For proof, you need not look further than NIGCOMSAT 1 (RIP). NIGCOMSAT 1 was Nigeria’s first satellite. It got lost is space after all the billions invested in it. That is what happens when a country doesn’t yet have a maintenance culture. With NIGCOMSAT, we

With NIGCOMSAT, we don’t know where it is presently and our country lost a little face and faced laughs in the international arena.

But with nuclear, if there should ever be an accident (God forbid), whole states will be affected within the space of an hour.

Entire states -not entire cities o – will suddenly have to be hurriedly evacuated. People that breathe in the air coming from the site of the accident have breathed in radioactive properties that could kill them silently or cause them cancer before death, months or years after, depending on one’s destiny. We should ask ourselves: Is that the kind of risk we want to take?

Nuclear power is an unnecessary diversion that we don’t need at this point in time.

Look at what happened in Chernobyl Ukraine in the 1980s. The region around Chernobyl had to be evacuated, and remains a ghost region till today, almost 30 years later.

Minister Fayemi should not allow his enemies make him the minister that will bring in nuclear under his watch.

I say this because if anything should happen in any region due to nuclear accident long after his watch, generations of internally displaced Nigerians will blame him for introducing us to nuclear-generated electricity.

Export Nigeria’s Uranium Instead

Let him instead champion the export of uranium to countries that have high maintenance culture like France. Nigeria can sign uranium sale agreements with countries like China, France, UK and other nuclear-armed nations that have managed to develop a high maintenance culture.

Let us not burn our fingers in the process of trying to warm them.

Take Action Now, Call Minister Kayode Fayemi And Say No To Nuclear Energy

Dear reader, Minister Kayode Fayemi’s phone number is 234 0805 5556 655. Call him and tell him you don’t want a uranium enrichment plant cited in your village or anywhere else in Nigeria.

If he tells you it will bring jobs to your kinsmen, tell him you don’t care. Tell him that instead the uranium should be exported – that it should not be used to generate electricity in Nigeria till we can handle it.

If he asks you to least an ulternative, tell him we should use the less dagerous coal instead. If enough people tell him that, and enough people say no on social media, they will stop that deadly project.