At the ongoing annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun labelled the West as hypocrites. She said this as multilateral funding agencies and Western nations blocked attempts by Nigeria to fund coal-generated power projects on the premise that it is not ‘green’.

She expatiated that the excuse from the West was that the project would likely increase carbon emission and as such prescribed ‘green’ sources like wind and solar energy which were too expensive for a country that is currently undergoing economic recession.

“In Nigeria, we have coal and there is power inadequacy. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what it will take to get coal-fired power. Yet, we are being blocked. I think there is some hypocrisy in that. We have an entire Western industrialization that was built on coal-fired energy and that is the competitive advantage that has been used to develop Britain, where I grew up. Now, Africa wants to do it, and they are saying it’s not green, we can’t do it and that we should go and do solar and wind, which are the most expensive power projects in the world.” Punch reports Adeosun as saying.

She decried the inconsistency in policies by the West and multilateral institutions, which was hampering Nigeria’s development.