Iranian firms specialising in
nuclear technology are prepared to offer Nigeria their expertise to help
boost electricity supply in the country, the Iranian ambassador to
Nigeria, Saeed Koozechi, said Wednesday.
“We (Iran) are using our nuclear
programme to improve the power, health and agriculture sectors in the
country,’’ Mr. Koozechi said on Wednesday in Abuja.
The envoy, who invited Nigeria to
participate in an international exhibition on power scheduled to hold in
Tehran, in November, said Iran also had invaluable experience in
constructing power plants and transmission lines for electricity supply.
“The power sector is very important
and it is the blood for the economy, without electricity it is
impossible to create any investment or job,’’ he said.
Mr. Koozechi lamented the impact of
extensive sanctions imposed on Iran by Western countries over the
country’s nuclear programme, saying the action was having a crippling
effect on Iran’s economy.
The envoy said the sanctions
spearheaded by the United States and the European Union was not only
affecting Iran’s economy, but also international trade relations and
businesses, including trade with Nigeria.
According to the envoy, as a result
of the sanctions, banks in Iran and Nigeria could not effectively
conduct transactions on SWIFT, a financial-messaging service for most
cross- border money transfers.
Iranian businesses, he said, had
resorted to companies in United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey to bring
in their products to Nigeria.
The ambassador, who gave annual
trade figures between Nigeria and Iran at $50 million, described the
volume of trade as low, considering the size of both economies, which
could easily help increase the figure to about $500 million.
With Nigeria as the largest economy
in Africa, and the continent’s most populous, he said this could provide
Iran a huge opportunity and capacity for economic cooperation.
He condemned the “bad-face” given
Iran by the Western media, saying this was another impediment to
international trade with foreign nations, including Nigeria.
Mr. Koozechi said accusations that
his country’s nuclear programme was about atomic bomb as alleged by the
U.S. and its European allies were not true, pointing out that issue was
well known as a completely peaceful programme.
“We have had more than 7,000 hour
visits from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts to
Iranian nuclear sites and they have not found anything that links our
nuclear activities to atomic bomb,” he said. “This is a technical issue
and it is within the framework of the IAEA, but some of the Western
countries try to make it a political issue.”
He said the main aim of the Iranian
nuclear issue was to create power (electricity), with one nuclear site
in Tehran currently producing about 1,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity,
while plans are on to establish 20 other nuclear power plants.
In 2013, the Middle East country
produced 10 billion kilowatts of electricity from its nuclear power
plant, saving over $1billion and equivalent of about 70 million barrels
of crude oil for the country’s economy.
(NAN)
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