Acting President searches for power out of darkness
“What is he going to achieve now, if after supervising the NIPP for about three years the nation did not achieve the desired result,” a presidency source told Sunday Trust. To achieve any meaningful result, activities towards attaining the goals have to move at jet speed, but the Acting President does not seem to be […]
“What is he going to achieve now, if after supervising the NIPP for about three years the nation did not achieve the desired result,” a presidency source told Sunday Trust.
To achieve any meaningful result, activities towards attaining the goals have to move at jet speed, but the Acting President does not seem to be a man in haste. “It’s two months now since he was made Acting President. What impact has he made? He spent two months fighting to take full control. It’s all about 2011 presidency. He plans to fix the power so that he can be endeared to Nigerians and seek a second term. But this will be difficult,” the source added.
The emergency
In a move similar to what President Umaru Yar’adua said he would do to raise power supply but never really did before he took ill late last year, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan introduced measures Thursday to confront the lingering power supply shortfall in the country.
He established a Presidential Committee, headed by himself, and involving the Minister of State for Power, Nuhu Wya; Finance Minister, Olusegun Aganga; Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi; the Director General of Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Mr Emeka Ezeh, his counterpart at the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE), Dr Christopher Anyanwu; and experts from sections of the private sector.
The Minister of State for Power, Wya, who announced the constitution and focus of the committee said the officials of the CBN, BPE and BPP, as well as the Finance Ministry were included in the committee to get the relevant establishments to address budget matters, simply transactions, ensure due process, sustain necessary reforms, and generally ease the implementation of emergency power generation plan for the country.
Wya who works under Jonathan as the committee’s vice chairman spoke of its focus: “Our immediate objective plan is to improve the power supply to the generality of Nigerians, get sufficient gas, reinforce our transmission and distribution networks and ensure that whatever has been put on ground is improved and sustained to create an enabling environment for the private sector to come in and invest, to make the power sector a very conducive environment for both present and new participants. We are going to explore in the medium term, other sources of energy. We have many dams that have been constructed by the water resources; they have huge hydro electric potential. We are going to tap into those resources so that we can give Nigerians more electricity delivered to the point of consumption.”
He described the urgency of the committee’s work in these words: “There is no declaration of state of emergency, but we are working in an emergency manner. We are getting all the stakeholders involved to participate in this committee because power is a chain of many stakeholders from the fuel to the generation, to the transmission, and to distribution; all involving a lot of people. The oil companies are in charge of the fuel and the water resource ministry are in-charge of the water. They are going to be involved.”
YAR’ADUA’S EMERGENCY ON POWER SUPPLY THAT NEVER WAS
A promise to declare a state of emergency for the right atmosphere to fix the long-troubled power sector was the most anticipated of President Yar’adua’s electoral promises. When he rolled out his Seven-Point Agenda, power supply was right on top. Against energy as the first of the seven points of focus, the government stated, “We need to solve the problem of power and energy – National Council on Energy to drive the energy policy and advice on power, energy and gas… Energy emergency to be declared.”
The declaration never came. The nearest to it was a pledge by the government to attain a minimum of 6000 megawatts of electricity supply by December 2009. It was clear from the look of things by November 23 when Yar’adua was flown out for medical attention that the December target would be a mirage. And it was.
On the eve of Yar’adua’s departure to Saudi Arabia, Minister of Power at the time, Dr Olanrewaju Babalola admitted that the December deadline was most likely to fail. He confessed to newsmen while inspecting facilities at the Geregu Power Station in Ajaokuta, Kogi State, that only 3,500 megawatts had so far been generated.
Goodluck Jonathan himself confirmed the failure of the 6000 megawatt promise in his 2010 New Year Message to the nation when he announced that generation by December 31, 2009 stood at 3,700 megawatts.
Jonathan who was yet to become the Acting President at the time and spoke purely on behalf of bedridden Yar’adua, said, “At the inception of this Administration, we promised to drastically improve access to electric power by the end of 2009… Our target, which was modest, was set at generating 6,000 megawatts of electricity by year end. While I am happy today to report that we have achieved some substantial measure of success, I regret to mention that for a number of unforeseen and unavoidable reasons, this target could not be met. Millions of Nigerians are therefore still without power. For this, I tender on behalf of government very sincere regrets.”
Jonathan has since consolidated his grip on government, a process which began on February 9, 2010 when separate resolutions by the Senate and the House of Representatives made him acting president, and climaxed between March 16 and last Monday when he sacked Yar’adua’s cabinet, got the Senate to confirm his preferred ministers, and swore them in.
JONATHAN TAKES THE PLUNGE
In what looks like a renewed determination to find the elusive answer to sufficient electricity generation and distribution, Goodluck returned Nuhu Wya to the Ministry as Minister of State, Wya who explained the arrangement said the current effort by government would be supervised directly by the Acting President. “He has been leading the sector, particularly the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP). He will do everything humanly possible to see that we unravel the mystery surrounding the power sector. This is the reaping point for us because we have planted, we have watered and tendered the plant and it is now reaping time,” Wya said.
So, Nigeria comes to another take-off point by government to crack the power nut. As Wya mentioned, Jonathan has been in the business of delivering the power promise since the Yar’adua Government began. Under him, the government has dissipated much energy, used much time, and spent lots of money. What should Nigerians expect? Will there be a change from promising much, appearing to do much, but achieving very little?
INVESTMENTS OF 10 YEARS
Sunday Trust can reveal that power sector spending has overshot the N2 trillion mark since year 2000 without corresponding impact in electricity generation and distribution in the country. Obasanjo had expended nearly N1.5 trillion in his aspiration to increase the level of power generation by the end of his tenure in 2007. Findings are that the Yar’adua administration, despite the slow start in his own offensive, has used up N750 billion under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) which it inherited from Obasanjo.
Obasanjo launched the NIPP initiative with the goal of bridging the supply – demand gap and reducing the bottlenecks in the delivery system. Through the NIPP, the Obasanjo Administration promised to generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity before leaving office. But he left office with power generation at little above 4,000 megawatts.
Possibly underrating the task he was beginning to undertake, Yar’adua announced lightly upon assuming office in May 2007 that his predecessor spent about N1.5 trillion on the power sector between 2000 and 2007 with little to show as positive result. Excusing his disappointingly slow start later in the administration after setting himself the target that was to fail, he said, “While we are targeting 6,000 megawatts by 2009, the $10 billion invested in the sector between 2000 and 2007 has not translated into power generation, transmission and distribution, so we are exercising caution to ensure that any further funds to the sector would translate into production and delivery of energy to the ordinary Nigerian.”
Before that first show of determination, Yar’adua had suspended further spending on the NIPP projects following poor performance, in his view, by the contractors that handled the IPPs. He later lifted the ban after the approval of the modified structure for the implementation of the NIPP, with the resolve to add capacity and raise supply to the dream 6000 megawatts by end of 2009.
The National Economic Council [NEC] representing the three tiers of government approved for NIPP in 2009 the sum of $5.3 billion. Of the sum, an anticipatory approval was given by the Steering Council for N323 billion for immediate commitment to projects that had been deemed nearest to completion by the end of the significant year, 2009.
Besides spending on the NIPPs, the Obasanjo regime had consistently increased the budgets for the power ministry throughout his tenure. Additionally, Data from the Ministry of Power indicate other funds expended in the power sector within the decade under the World Bank Funded Project Management Unit (PMU), including the $100 million Transmission Development Project (TDP), the $172 million National Energy Development Project(NEDP), the $135 million Niger Basin Water Resources Development and Sustainable Ecosystem Management Project, and the National Infrastructure Development Program and Transmission Development Project that gulped $100 million.
ACHIEVED TARGET HAS NEVER EXCEEDED 4500 MW
As it would turn out, power generation capacity over the decade has never exceeded 4,500 megawatts any particular time.
Now, through deciding to mark a new beginning by making himself the substantive Minister of Power, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has hinted of the invariability of injection of fresh funds into the seemingly bottomless power supply drain pipe. He has supervised fund injections before without success. Will the Goodluck acting president hit luck this time?
The National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) sees little difference ahead of Jonathan’s new approach. The General Secretary of the Union, Comrade Joe Ajaero, told Sunday Trust on phone that the power sector had consistently failed Nigerians because people of conflicting interests had always been appointed to manage the various layers of the sector.
Ajaero said, “If the acting President wants to revive the power sector, he must lay the right foundation for the sector’s reforms. There is no big deal about the Acting President handling the power sector himself. We are concerned, even, that other pressing state matters may weigh him down. We also worry that along the line, he may only succeed in using people of conflicting interests.”
Citing the example of Brazil where he said the President took charge of the power sector and produced the desired results, Ajaero said what is required of the Acting President is to diversify power sources.
“The acting President should not allow the hawks around him to hijack the power sector,” Ajaero advised. “He should proceed to set short, medium and long term goals that will produce the desired results.”
He debunked the claims that the failure to realise the Presidential mandate of 6,000 megawatts last year was as a result of gas shortage, arguing that the sector’s transmission and distribution networks were equally weak.
Commenting on the nine Integrated Power Projects for which huge sums of money were invested last year with the aim of actualising the 6000 megawatts, the NUEE scribe said the projects did not come up to scratch because they were politicised. He expressed the hope that the new move would lead to the anticipated end in good time.
For Senator Caleb Zagi (PDP Kaduna), Jonathan will be doing himself and the nation a great deal of good if he sustains his own challenge and finally gives Nigerians the electricity they have always desired but have never had. Zagi who represents Kaduna South Senatorial Zone in the Senate, urged Jonathan to act fast, saying if the power crisis improves, it will serve as a springboard for other development projects.
A leading member of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in Kano State, Alhaji Hassan Indabawa who spoke to Sunday Trust on phone, advised Nigerians to view Jonathan’s decision to personally head the Ministry of Power with optimism and wish him success for the country’s sake.
Indabawa, a former special assistant to Governor Ibrahim Shekarau, told Sunday Trust, “The Acting President has much in his hands already, especially since he has no deputy, but by deciding to personally oversee the Power Ministry, he has shown that power supply will get much of his attention.”