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Energy Crisis and Sustainable Development in Africa: Perspectives of Some Nigerians on Awareness, Causes and Way Forward

Focusing on some Nigerians’ extent of awareness, possible causes and the way forward on energy crisis, this paper examined the status of energy crisis in Africa and its strong link to development in the Continent using Nigeria (the so called giant of Africa) as a case study. Four hundred and forty nine (N = 449) post graduate students from Benue State University and University of Agriculture all in Makurdi (representing 33 out of 36 States in Nigeria) responded to “Perception of Energy Crisis in Nigeria Questionnaire (PECNQ)" developed and validated by the researcher. The instrument which has a reliability coefficient of 0.79 using Cronbach Alpha was used to collect data which were analyzed using frequency, means, standard deviation and rank order. The results show among others that even the educated are only aware to a little extent on the extent of energy crisis in Nigeria; most people are not conscious of the contributions of the society through poor maintenance culture and waste to the crisis. However, corruption, conscientiousness and illiteracy ranked highest among factors that lead to energy crisis. On the other hand, a change in attitude to life was considered the most important step towards elimination of energy crisis followed by the need for mass literacy campaign, education of the generally poor rural populace and drastic reduction in population through birth control and tax on extra number of children above the maximum allowed.