Chamba Simeh
Nigeria’s power sector seems to have defied all the solutions adopted to cure its ailing nature. The federal government since 1999 had failed to meet its timeline on boosting power supply to Nigerians after injecting huge sums of money into the sector. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo woefully failed in his bid to improve power generation to 10,000 megawatts by 2007 in 1999 even after pumping a whopping $16 billion into it in eight years. In 2009, Nigerians were told to expect 6,000 megawatts by 2010. It never came. The promise by the short-lived administration of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to achieve 10,000 megawatts of power supply by December 31, 2009 was broken. President Goodluck Jonathan is also recording serial failures in his promises to revamp the nation’s power sector.
It is, therefore, incredulous that the Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo, would blame the current near collapse of power supply to some extraneous factors rather than government’s inability to break the jinx in the power sector. “The recent dip in power supply is mainly due to inadequate supply of gas to the thermal gas power plant arising from the current act of vandalism on gas pipelines, resulting to loss of 800 megawatts of power supply. We have issues with Kanji, Jebba and Shiroro dams, which will be redressed as water level improves. We need rain,” Nebo said in update on the state of power supply in Abuja last week.
Nebo should realise that Nigerians are not as gullible as he and other public officers presume. The minister and his principal, Jonathan, ought to have known that the hiccups cited as being responsible for the current drastic drop in power generation had always been there when they promised Nigerians 24-hour uninterrupted power supply for the umpteenth time last week even in the face of hopelessness. Nebo had, on assumption of duty in January 2013, promised Nigerians that power will rise to over 5,500 megawatts by the end of July 2013, but failed. Again, the Minister of State for Power, Hajia Zainab Ibrahim Kuchi, had assured that power will peak at 10,000 megawatts by end of 2014; this, of course, is unrealistic given the facts on ground.
President Jonathan appears to be at his wits’ end in trying to resolve the power logjam. Having failed to improve power supply, following the handing of the N480 billion assets of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) on November 1, 2013 to private investors, the President is now devising new strategies to invigorate the nation’s epileptic power sector. In a meeting recently with Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mr Mark Rutte, and Chief Executive Officer of Shell International, Mr Ben Van Beurden, Jonathan said Nigeria will spend N165 billion on a comprehensive programme to check crude oil theft, the vandalism of oil and gas infrastructure and apprehension and prosecution of crude oil thieves. So, what happens to the mouth-watering Tompolo maritime contract?
Jonathan also said in his 2014 New Year’s message, “We shall boost investments in transmission to ensure power generated is properly distributed. In this regard, we have mobilized an additional $1.5 billion for the upgrade of the transmission network. Government will also strengthen regulation of the sector, and closely monitor electricity delivery to increase this beyond 18 hours per day. We will complete the privatization of the NIPP projects, accelerate work on our gas pipeline infrastructure and also continue to invest in hydro-electric power and clean energy.” We are waiting.
In the same vein, Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo disclosed in Canada last week that the federal government has approved $3.7 billion to improve power transmission so as to wheel 20,000 megawatts. The question is, if the Obasanjo administration spent $16 billion without achieving close to 5,000 megawatts of electricity, what magic can Jonathan’s $3.7 billion do? Nothing.
In its continued search for solution to the power imbroglio, Nigeria on March 24, 2014 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the importation of electricity from the 40,000 megawatts Grand Inga Dam. This MoU, no doubt, exposes Nigeria to international ridicule and opprobrium. It is inexplicable that the world’s eighth largest oil producer is seeking help on power from a war-torn country. South Africa, with a population of 43 million, generates over 44,000 megawatts while fast-growing Ghana, known for its steady electricity supply, as well as smaller sister-countries such as Cote d’Ivoire and the Republic of Benin maintain enviable records in electricity generation.
All this boils down to the fact that the pervasive corruption in Nigeria is not likely to abate any time soon while the nation’s Vision 20:2020 will remain a mirage. A situation in which 120 million Nigerians have no access to electricity supply and over 160 million generators were imported into the country annually as at 2006, while about N1.6 trillion was spent to fuel generators is detrimental to the economic growth of Nigeria.
