Snail pace of the Mambilla power project

But it cannot be until the project is completed. And that has been in doubt now because the project’s gestation period of over 30 years. Officials of the Federal Ministry of Power dispute a report by this paper that Mambilla’s has joined the growing field of abandoned projects that dot the national landscape.  Initiated in […]

But it cannot be until the project is completed. And that has been in doubt now because the project’s gestation period of over 30 years. Officials of the Federal Ministry of Power dispute a report by this paper that Mambilla’s has joined the growing field of abandoned projects that dot the national landscape.  
Initiated in 1982 with an initial design capacity for generating 2,600 megawatt, which has since been increased to 3050 megawatts, it would, if completed, be Nigeria’s biggest single hydropower station. But that has not been and may not be for some time to come, courtesy of a web of high level intrigues that a report by this paper documented, involving powerful interests, including key officials of the Presidency.
Between 1982 and now, according to the report, the project has been a victim of serial manoeuvres featuring changes in its scope along with the juggling of consultants and contractors.  And all of these have not been without attendant, equally inexplicable, escalation of its costs. These developments have been to the detriment of the project.
The tortuous history of Mambilla hydropower plant began in 1982, when Messrs Bennie and Partners prepared its initial feasibility studies. By 2005 the German firm of Lahmeyer was engaged to replace the earlier consultant and it carried out extensive engineering works. By 2011, another project consultant Coyne et Bellier, a subsidiary of Tractebel Engineering of France was brought to replace Lahmeyer.
 Meanwhile, between 2004 and 2007, tenders were processed leading to the award of Lot 1 being the civil and hydraulics segment to CGC/CGGC of China for about $1.4 billion. Lot 3 was also advertised within that period without evaluation, which rendered the entire bid advertisement exercise dubious. This was just as the critical Lot 2, which has the electro-mechanical segment comprising turbines, pumps and generators, was left in abeyance.
As if this was not absurd enough, the Mambilla project has become the subject of a tussle over whether it should run as a turnkey-one stage affair or continue in the original programme of phased construction.  In the present dispensation a new French consultant who has reportedly been paid more than N2 billion, is insisting on the award of the contract to the Chinese Sinohydro firm on a turnkey status without going through the statutory tender process. Just as well the rival party being the CGC/CGGC, which is backed by the Chinese government and is the original contractor of Lot 1, is bent on retention of the status of its contract. Its position is accentuated by a veiled threat of a possible withdrawal of funding by the Chinese government.  
Hopefully the tense situation may have been doused  by a seeming truce in which each of the contending parties has been carried along through the joint award of the contract to them on a build, operate and transfer basis, at a cost of $3.2billion, with the Federal Government contributing 15% of the sum as counterpart  funding.
The lesson in the handling of the Mambilla hydro power project suggests that the Power Sector Reforms Act of 2005 and the current administration’s power sector transformation agenda have had little impact. Given its scope, the Mambilla project should be one of, if not the, arrowheads of the nation’s power sector reforms.
In response to the report, the Ministry of Power stated that the 30-year period was not unusual. “This is very well in accordance with the project development process of such projects and in line with International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) standards on construction of large dams’,” the ministry said. That’s not a tenable explanation. Brazil and South Africa, two close examples of comparable socio-economic status with Nigeria’s are virtually self-sufficient in their electricity needs, and have spare capacities to export. Corruption is one factor that has weighed down the Mambilla project for this long.
The government should get real serious to ensure that the project is completed without further delay. The ministry should also live up to its words that there was ‘concerted effort and a holistic development strategy for actualizing this landmark project’. The sooner this is done the better for the nation.