Power supply and environmental sustainabi-lity in the University of Uyo: An agenda for full-blown research in Nigeria

Power supply remains an important factor for socio-economic and technological development of every nation. Despite this reality, most countries especially from the developing world have not been able to solve the problem of power supply for the citizens. The seriousness of this problem vary from country to country. In Nigeria, power supply has become the most critical factor that has engaged policy debates, yet the depth of such problem has not been clearly established. An observation was made on the general daily duration (in hours) of public power supply in the University of Uyo, Nigeria, using average daily supply of electricity to the University community over three consecutive seasons (dry, wet and hamattan seasons) in 2005. It was observed that average monthly public power supply to the University community varied significantly from an average of 2 h in the dry season, 3.6 h in the wet season and 4.8 h in the hamattan season (P < 0.05). Each period of public power black-out witnessed massive switch on of generating sets in offices and business centres. Considering the fact that the University of Uyo is one of the public sector institutions that merits regular public power supply from the power authorities, this paper argues that there is need for a full scale study on Nigerian cities, especially looking at the fact that small scale businesses dominate industrial landscape of the country.                             Key words: Public power supply, environment, sustainability, University of Uyo, Nigeria.