Topic: Power sector shame, an end in sight?

Each time I try to muster the will to write about the humiliation, shame and frustrations the 21st Century people of a vast country like Nigeria undergo owing to the near collapse of the power sector, my will power would not just carry me through.

The situation comes out as trying to get a dead horse on its feet by administering corporal punishment on its carcass. I mean, what new angst could be visited on a brazenly slack organisation such as the Power Holding Company of Nigeria? Worse still is my fear that its management is likewise bereft of technical capabilities, or why would one see electric power turned on perfunctorily only to be seized for days to come?

I usually wonder if those times when we ‘see the light’ are a test-run exercise or a mimicry thrown at a frustrated populace. Nollywood movie makers could, on this note, get ingenious by going into the production of video flicks with durations of between five and 10 minutes to suit the requirement of movies freaks in areas where electricity power is brought on for approximately that duration on some days.

Ours is a country where you wake up at the dawn of the day, having decided to attend the first mass service of a Roman Catholic Church on a Sunday, you are assailed by a large swathe of darkness around you in a so-called mega-city such as Lagos.

The impetus was, however, re-awakened in me when I read a write-up in one of the national newspapers (not THE PUNCH) about the newly appointed Minister of Power, Dr. Lanre Babalola, wherein the writer, one Ijeoma Nwogwugwu, claimed to know the new helmsman very well. She went ahead to vouch for the acclaimed young man’s (said to be about 40 years old) capabilities in energy matters. According to her, she worked with Babalola on the power sector reform programme of the Bureau of Public Enterprises in 2001, and had no doubt that he was “one of the few people in this country that had a clear vision of what was required to turn around this extremely critical sector.”

Good as it may sound, it has become doubtful relying on mouth piecing by the average Nigerian on behalf of another, and not until after a reasonable time of remarkable performance by the person involved. I got wiser about this shortly after the late Chief Bola Ige was saddled with the Energy portfolio by the government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Upon the announcement of the revered Afenifere stalwart as Minister in that troubled and non-performing parastatal, no little did he shore up my hopes that at last Nigerians would begin to enjoy the reasonable benefit of steady electric power in their homes; industries would soon heave a sigh of relief and many pauperized civil servants can at last damn their slavers and post their letters of resignation from home to bid bye-bye to a work that had become chore.

Ige had gone on to announce a programme that would see to a 50 per cent graduated improvement in power generation and distribution within the first six months and progressively to one year of coming into office. This was too good to be true, but I was almost convinced that the person at hand would not toy with his reputation or play hara-kiri with his words. But alas, one year, two years after, it was not so. One thing I can risk a guess about, though, was that unlike IBB who brazenly played lotto with Nigerians on his unending transition to nowhere programme, Ige, was probably being naïve or sabotaged outright.

I got worked up whenever President Umaru Yar’Adua’s Vision 2020 gets bandied around by apparently vested interests. I wonder if the country would be powered on candles and lanterns to a date they imagine would never arrive. Such is our collective shallowness that we have decided to overlook the nexus between power generation and development. We, as a people, have become so hypocritical that you’d see a person who just completed a shady deal running into the billions boldly step out to sermonize on corruption; or yet another who thrives on bribery and political patronage attempting to impact the virtues of pious living in younger ones.

Our collective blame in the collapse of the country’s power sector lies, for example, in the unabashed manner the average Nigerian powers his household on generating set, all season round, and at a cost which our individual take-home wage cannot reasonably account for. Such is the tacit way through which we pass on our little dirty tricks to the next generation.

I glimpsed a part of the enormity of the problem at hand the last time I saw congratulatory messages in newspapers for an occasion being celebrated by former Independent National Electoral Commission Chairman, Prof. Abel Guobadia. My curiosity got a better part of me and I decided to look under for the sponsors of the adverts. From what I gathered, the former INEC boss would probably not be in support if Nigeria decided to take her fate in her hands by deciding, for example, to implement policies that would see Nigeria free itself from the unwholesome importation of generators on a gradual basis, as part of a multi-pronged solution to the power crisis.

Guobadia is, today, and legitimately so, chairman of a string of companies whose main concern is the importation of Cummins generators into Nigeria. The adverts said as much. I have no quarrel with this, but it did give me an inkling into what sort of businesses our policy makers retire into. Several others are likewise into businesses that don’t promote growth.

Let us begin on a modest note by making our neighbour, Ghana, our standard; and we might not easily miss the target. Part of Babalola’s policy could also include presentation of a bill to the National Assembly that would make the trading in PHCN cables and transformers easily traceable, for the sake of making vandalisation of electricity equipment less profitable.

The descent into darkness has become the harbinger of several negative trends, including but not exclusive to giving a free reign to men of the underworld to perpetrate heinous crime, defeat of the 4th and 5th Millennium Development Goals (child and maternal mortality) as darkness has become contri-butory factors to malaria.

Darkness at home promotes disharmony as tempers easily rise after return from the hardship of the day’s work. Above all, let no one be deceived that development can be achieved without steady electricity power, and any leader making promises irrespective of this fact is not fit to be there. The intractable problem of the energy sector is akin to government shooting itself in the legs and sabotaging its own plans.

Our power sector is a clear evidence that our govt. is clueless and lack initatives to move this country forward.

It has become an economic drain instance of a blessing to Nigerians. Who will blame the multinationals when the money U spent on power alone accounts for over 60% of ur total expenditure.

We need leaders to more this nation forward not the crap we have here.