BEWILDERINGLY, Nigeria has become a cauldron of white elephants, with 11,886 abandoned projects littering the landscape. The most symbolic of the lot should be the Mambilla hydropower plant located in Taraba State, in the North-East zone, which was initiated during the Shehu Shagari administration in 1982. Thirty-two years later, the 3,050-megawatt project is yet to take off. One phrase sums up this fiasco: shame of a nation.
No effort by the government to reassure the public can explain away the sheer waste and ineptitude that have characterised the project. Early this month, the Goodluck Jonathan government again signified its intention to complete the project as announced by Mohammed Wakil, the Minister of State for Power.
Wakil said the ministers of Power and Finance would travel to China to finalise the details of the project with the China Exim Bank. He put the contract sum at $5 billion. “In the history of the country, this is so far the most expensive project … one has to follow (the) due process,” Wakil boasted. It is difficult to believe the government. It is fond of dashing the hopes of Nigerians when it comes to providing basic infrastructure, and it has since used up its trust capital.
As a country that intends to join the comity of developed nations, Nigeria must set her priorities right. The Mambilla project is one of such critical infrastructure that can be a game-changer in a nation reeling under the crushing weight of poor power generation capacity that only attained a temporary peak of 4,600MW last month. Of course, this is mere pittance. Demand for electricity in Nigeria is estimated to be about 15,000MW-20,000MW.
In terms of scope, the project is the biggest hydroelectric dam in Africa. Apart from generating electricity, it has three separate dams connected to the Donga River, which will be utilised for agricultural purposes. The Mambilla project has been stalled in spite of the seeming efforts of successive governments to get it off the ground.
After many years of inactivity, the Olusegun Obasanjo administration offered a window of hope for its resuscitation between 2006 and 2007 when it signed a contract for the execution of Lot 1 (or the civil aspect) of the project with a Chinese consortium – China Gezhouba Group and China Geo-Engineering Corporation – for $1.46 billion.
To demonstrate its seriousness, the government paid 15 per cent (about $219 million) to the consortium as an advance. But as usual here, the hope was decapitated. Strangely, the story changed a few months later as the government cancelled the contract, an action that made the Chinese government to also withhold its $2.5 billion counterpart funding for the project. Earlier in 2005, a German firm, Lahmeyer, secured a $3.2 million contract for the Mambilla feasibility study, but carried out no further work after it was blacklisted by the World Bank for bribery in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
In its 2011 annual report, the Ministry of Power said Mambilla would generate 2,600MW and that the Federal Government had signed a contract of $37.2 million with Messrs Coyne et Bellier “for the detailed engineering and project management … with a completion period of 63 months.”
Over time, the timetable for the completion of the project has been shifted. Likewise, the contract sum has been juggled endlessly. In June 2013, Chinedu Nebo, the Minister of Power, put the contract value at $3.2 billion, while Wakil (Nebo’s deputy) stated in September in Gombe that it was $7 billion. For a serious project of this nature, this flip-flop is embarrassing. It is a sign that the project is a vehicle for self-aggrandisement and false promises.
The fresh target of 2018 for the completion of the project is also likely to fail as five years is the minimum period given by the builders for its execution. We call for a comprehensive review of the project. But before then, the government is bound by its social contract with Nigerians to disclose all that it has committed to the project so far since inception. Abuja must clear the air over the confusion in the Mambilla project.
Power is an irreducible factor of economic and social change. A project with such potential must take priority in our development plan. There are many companies across the world that can build this dam to specification in the allotted time. They should be contacted, instead of the government being fixated on Chinese power companies. One of the Chinese firms has yet to deliver on the 700MW Zungeru hydroelectric power project many years after the contract was awarded.
The government should state its plan for the project in the light of the new developments in Nigeria’s power sector. According to the Electricity Power Sector Reform Act (2003) and August 2010 Roadmap for Power Sector Reforms, the distribution and generation companies are supposed to be in private hands. Indeed, 11 DisCos and six GenCos have been privatised, leaving only the Transmission Company of Nigeria in the hands of the government. Under the privatisation plan, the government is offering the 10 National Integrated Power Plants it built for sale.
To put an end to the unnecessary delays and corruption that have tainted the process, we suggest that the government should invite bids from competent international companies for the execution of the project. Our government should look to the West to attract private investment to the project and tap from two centuries of expertise in power infrastructure.
This will not only free the government from the financial outlay needed to execute the project, thousands of megawatts will also be added to our beggarly power output.
