Environmental experts have called on the Federal Government and other stakeholders to urgently work towards making clean cooking accessible to over 140 million Nigerian households that still rely on solid biomass fuel.
Workshop Highlights Urgent Need
Speaking at a workshop in Abuja, the Executive Director of the International Centre for Energy, Environment and Development, Ewah Eleri, revealed that 68.3 percent of families still cook with firewood, contributing to 17 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions. Eleri explained that women bear the greatest health and time-poverty burden from indoor air pollution, which results in an estimated 95,300 deaths annually in Nigeria. He called for urgent strategic solutions to meet the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals.
Eleri argued that although strong policy momentum now exists, clean cooking finance is held back by weak compliance readiness, regulatory bottlenecks, fragmented coordination, sustainable performance-based revenue, and low investor confidence in the sector.
“Now is the time to turn momentum into investable, bankable action. Today’s workshop turns a completed assessment into shared commitment, validating the evidence, agreeing on priorities, and settling the actions needed to mobilise financing and scale clean cooking access for millions of households,” he said.
High Firewood Usage Among Households
Another resource person, Basil Obasi of the Partnership for Agile Governance and Climate Engagement (PACE), argued that over 72 percent of households use firewood as their primary cooking fuel, the highest rate among comparable African economies. He disclosed that charcoal accounts for 13 percent of fuel use, concentrated in peri-urban areas where electrification has partially reduced firewood access. Obasi described this as Nigeria’s clean cooking crisis, noting that cooking fuel costs the country $1.4 billion in annual economic losses.
