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When
President Umar Yar’Adua made an allusion last January to the colossal sum of
$10b sunk between 1999 and 2007 in the power sector by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration
which was yet to produce expected results, the news was received with
bewilderment across the country. Many thought that, perhaps, the President was
mistaken, misinformed or that he made a hasty pronouncement. Conflicting
figures below the $10b began to tumble into the grapevine from sympathizers of
the former president. Even after the President subsequently sacked his Senior
Special Assistant on Power Sector Reform and Coordinator of the National
Integrated Power Project (NIPP), Foluseke Somolu, allegedly for disputing the
figure of $10b, many were still reluctant to believe that the president was
sure of his facts. The haze began to clear when Speaker Oladimeji Bankole told
the nation that $16b was actually spent on the power sector - that in addition
to the $10b, an additional extra budgetary spending of $6b was made by the
Obasanjo administration! Public outrage compelled the House to order an
investigation.
Actually,
no one can put a handle on what was actually spent as revelations during the
probe showed that the extra $6 billion was appropriated but never released.
Even key actors in the power sector, such as Liyel Imoke added another twist to
the figures when he disclosed $6 billion was spent between 1999 and 2007. There
are pointers to the fact that the amount was much lower than the $10 billion
and $16 billion being bandied around by the presidency and House of
Representatives, respectively. A top official in the presidency, it would seem,
was instrumental in misinforming President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua about the actual
amount expended, but the presidency is too far caught up in the web of
misrepresentation to swallow its pronouncements on the power sector.
Many
years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Campbell Armstrong’s novel titled Agents
of Darkness. I never got round to reading the book but right now, the morbid
title seems quite appropriate to describe some of the persons – human and
corporate - that have been named in the on-going investigation of the power
sector by the Ndudi Elumelu led House of Representatives Committee on Power and
Steel. What other name can be given to those who have chosen to profit from a
grievous national malady?
What
the investigation by Elumelu’s committee has revealed is that the power sector
in Nigeria
is bandit territory – an industry where rules and laws are ignored or flouted
with impunity. Contracts were awarded at fantastic costs without due process or
awarded to persons unqualified ab initio and to companies with dubious records;
payments were made without commensurate work being done; appropriations and
extra budgetary expenditures were made without statutory backing; contracts
were even awarded to phantom companies. The expositions are making everyone
wonder how the Obasanjo administration that prided itself as one that placed a
very high premium on due process and zero tolerance for corruption could be the
same purveyor of these illegalities.
The
story of the power sector in Nigeria
is a sad one. With an average load demand in excess of 6000 megawatts (MW), the
installed capacity for power generation is said to be about 5000MW but actual
generation totters between 2,000MW and 3,200MW down from 4,000MW per annum
attained from rehabilitation of old power plants in 2003. In the circumstance,
power outages are inevitable. To worsen the situation, every effort to revamp
the power sector has ended up as one step forward, two steps backward. And
power industry staffers have never helped matters. From the Electricity
Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) to the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) to
NEP PLC, to the present Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), staffers are
notorious for diversion of payments, alteration of meter readings, collection
of gratifications, and making of illegal connections. They are even routinely
fingered in the stealing of power distribution equipment. Such corruption,
ineptitude, fraud and outright sabotage coupled with the untold damage
unleashed in the locust infested years of military rule has transformed Nigeria
into a generator - powered economy.
Everyone
depends on generators even if it is only the lithe type derisively called “I
pass my neighbour”. In business places and residences, generators rumble round
the clock - for those who can afford the noise, the fumes and the cost. For the
rest of the population that is compelled to live in the dark, each day is an
agony and each night a nightmare. Nothing has hampered the economic development
of Nigeria
more than this outrageous irony in a country that is blessed with incalculable
gas reserves rated as the sixth highest in the world.
Ordinarily,
there is enough justification for the president to set up a high powered
commission of inquiry. Power is vital to the economy. The absence of power
supply is a major cause of poverty and unemployment because it renders artisans
and cottage industrialists redundant. Many manufacturers are relocating to
other countries with more stable power supply. As more industries are shut
down, prices of manufactured goods skyrocket and unemployment rises. But
official and unofficial advisers of the president will prefer that darkness
takes over the land than for the president to be seen to be ‘witch-hunting’ his
predecessor (read benefactor). The National Energy Council set up by Yar’Adua
in September 2007 ought to be concluding its report. The President has every
reason to declare a state of emergency in the power sector as he promised in
his inaugural address. Only by so doing can he meet his target of doubling
power generation by 2009 and making outages a thing of the past by 2011. And
only by so doing can he ensure that his 7-point Agenda does not remain a
mirage.
All
said, the federal government has failed woefully in the provision of
electricity as it did in telecom services. To realize his goals, therefore,
Yar’Adua will do well through the impending reshufflement to bring in as
ministers and special advisers responsible for energy and power, persons with a
track record and who are knowledgeable about the sector, and not persons
appointed out of some political exigency. In any case, the best thing for
the government to do is still to pass on the responsibility for power
generation, transmission and distribution to the private sector. Only then can
we expect to witness a revolution of the type that occurred in the telecom
sector. Until then, we – all of us - shall remain victims of agents of
darkness.
uchebush@yahoo.com 0805 1090
050
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Posted by Robot| 22.03.2008 11:35