Effects of biofuel production on selected local Communities in Nigeria

Biofuel is gradually being adopted as alternative to fossil fuel in the use for automotive, thermal and power generation. The Nigerian Policy on biofuel introduced in 2007 expresses the national biofuel production programme. However, problems associated with production and uses arise from the effects on arable land and staple foods, which if diverted for production, have vast diverse effects, depending on the people, environment and pathway of production. Since there are reported activities in biofuel feedstock as well as bio-ethanol and biodiesel productions in some parts of Nigeria, the geographical zones were selected and the production sites defined. The communities around the production sites were sampled with a questionnaire to obtain perceptions of the effects. The perceptions were statistically analyzed to derive the effects for each zone and to check for significant (p<0.05) difference in the effects. Results showed varying effects of biofuel production in and across the zones.