Electricity, Roads and the Demise of Nigeria

Provide electricity for the people of this country at any cost and build roads. Do nothing else, and yours would have been the best government ever.

The people of this country are the most enterprising you can get anywhere in the world. There is a large population to be served. All we need is electricity to power our machines and thoughts and it is done. “Let there be light, the good Creator said, and there was light”, the holy writ said. Light is the beginning of all things and all creation and creativity.

Nigerian industries are all dying because of lack of reliable power supply. They cannot continue to run the diesel powered generating sets and still have profit space. Cost of goods and services are made exorbitant because of lack of adequate sustainable power supply.

Next to power are roads. If people can move about easily and freely, there would be so much power in the economy that people would be busy and be mindless of government resources. Everybody is waiting for the crumbs falling from the politicians and highly placed civil servants stealing public money because there is no where else to go. If there are roads to use to evacuate agricultural products, if there are roads for people to go and come, the issue of rural urban migration would reduce drastically. Many people would be content to come into the urban centers to transact their businesses and go back if they could do so. There are no roads for them to go and come.

There are parts of this country that do not have any roads at all. Their state governments have been complete frauds. The federal government could come to the rescue of these people be building the federal roads in those states. How can some states in this country stay with neither state nor federal roads?

Obasanjo had many ideas for the solution to the electricity problem - the independent power projects(IPP). He could not pass the litmus test of corruption, so all the 16billion dollars U.S. voted for the project were stolen right in his presence. The independent power project system was a good idea gone awry. In it lay the salvation of the people of this country in so far as power problems were concerned. How this great idea died an unnatural death lends credence to the long standing but muted assertion that there is a cartel of Indian/Lebanese businessmen and Nigerian civil servants sabotaging all efforts at public power generation and distribution to enable them sale their imported power generating sets otherwise known as generators.

Regrettably both the EFCC and the House of Representative Committee on Power, who have variously enquired into this mega-fraud, could not find anybody liable for stealing US$16billion meant for electricity from 1999 to 2007. As usual, we have to leave that behind us. If the history of Nigeria is anything to go by, it is already forgotten.

I, however, advocate that we may ignore, but we should not forget; because of tomorrow, because of our children and our posterity. More urgently, it seems to me, is ourselves. What if we live for 80 to 100 years in this speedily degenerating country? What becomes of us in those ages when it is not possible for us to do any better than we are doing today for ourselves without electricity? For myself I act. For myself, I write to advocate the following ideas. These are not entirely mine. It is a synthesis of discussions I have held in different times and places with some helpless Nigerians like most of us are.

First premise:

The following Nigerian cities have no business staying on the national grid of power supply – Lagos (State), Ibadan, Aba, Onitsha, Kano, Warri, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, Enugu, etc (as may be judged by sustainability and industrial activity).

Second premise:

The power needs of these industrial/commercial nerve centres can be estimated without much technicality.

Third premise:

The successful deregulation of the communication sector of our economy is a basis for anticipated success of this idea wherever it may be applied.

With a clear picture of the above premises, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) can go to work on exactly the same scale that the Nigerian Communication Commission did for communication that brought about the GSM and the attendant products and economic activities. This time NERC would focus on select cities with high population and industrial and commercial activities, determine their power needs and call for public bidding for those with capacity to provide the required power for each city of their choice. At the onset, growth factors would be considered by both the NERC and the bidders and providers. If a city would presently require 240 kilowatts, projection for 350 kilowatts would be the target at the first instance, incorporating plans for future expansion. The same thing that is done with the communication sector is what is being advocated here. Power providers would necessarily introduce the prepaid system of billing. They can invest on the prepaid meters and install them and deduct the cost from the purchases people make periodically and over time, they would recover the cost of the meters.

NERC, if I understand their present operations, are concerned with the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), the building of government operated independent power projects. Only a few private providers have been given licenses to provide power in some cities. The only one known to be showing signs of finally making it is the Aba Power Plant by Geometric Limited. NERC is probably swimming in the murkiness of the US$16billion spillage and is in dire need of unbundling itself from that monumental corruption. This NERC can be swept under the carpet with its spillage as we have done in previous cases and a new one charged with replicating communication sector reforms in the power sector set up.

All over the world, there is no country that is running national grid the way Nigeria is doing it. There is total diversification of the sources of power and also localization of the power supply system. This is the way to go. If this idea is followed up, it would work out and, even smaller urban centres can have investors jostling to provide them with their 50-100 kilowatts of electricity profitably.

This is a make or mar situation. It is either we take this step or we have no electricity to power our economy in less than 10 years time. Then the calamity would be upon us sooner than later.

Government failure at all three levels of government in Nigeria is already obvious to all Nigerians. Let’s not shy away from this path of salvation pretending that it would appear as if we are not serving our people again. Nobody is waiting for the government for anything again in this country. There are generators everywhere including ones secondary school children can carry and keep in their dormitory and people keep in their bedrooms which have led to fuel fumes killing whole families. Water borehole dots every space in the country. The communication sector reform has helped us know what we have to pay for our bills.

Nigerians now know that the era of free this and free that is gone. The reason militancy and dependence on government is still evident in some states is because the government is reluctant to unbundle responsibilities it cannot meet. My people say if a man does not say exactly how things are with him, he would be carried beyond his father’s compound.

Let’s face the facts.

Francis O. Nmeribe
Visit my blog: NIGERIA TRAVEL & RESIDENCE SECURITY