Arecent report highlighting the huge amount Nigerians spend to fuel their generators annually is a sad reminder of the lack of progress so far in government’s much trumpeted efforts to revive the country’s ailing electric power sector. According to the report of the Community Research and Development Centre, it costs Nigerians a staggering sum of N796.4 billion – approximately the same amount as the N796.7 billion voted for capital projects in the Federal Government’s 2009 budget – to provide electricity in their homes through self-efforts.
What else can best illustrate the paltry state of electricity supply in the country than recent news reports to the effect that generation had dropped by 1,476 megawatts, down from an earlier level of 1,000MW? This brought the off-peak power generation to 2,931MW, while the peak demand stood at 12,800MW. As usual, the situation has been blamed on the drop in water level at the hydro generation centres and the shortage of gas supply. These have always been the twin culprits employed to explain away poor service delivery, in the absence of systemic failure, which is also cited frequently.
At the root of the current problem has been a bungled privatisation process that resulted in the sale of the electricity firms to companies that lacked both the technical know-how and the financial muscle to play big in the power sector. A former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, was right when he laid the blame partly on those who privatised the power sector to their “friends and families.” After borrowing heavily from local banks to buy the firms, there is no more money to either invest for the purpose of expansion or pay off the loans. The result has been the replacement of an erstwhile ailing monopoly, Power Holding Company of Nigeria, with a worse monopoly with perhaps a worse state of health.
Highlighting the detrimental effects of poor electricity supply on the country, President Goodluck Jonathan, in his Roadmap for Power Sector Reform described it as “crippling the growth of productive and commercial industries, stifling the creation of jobs so urgently needed for the substantial youthful and ever growing population and the generally deleterious impact on social psyche of a people literally living in the 21st Century.”
Although the process of transferring the ownership of the power firms unbundled by Obasanjo’s government into 18 components was completed by Jonathan’s administration a year ago, the much expected change has remained elusive. Rather than bring succour, what the new privately-owned generation and distribution companies have done has been to inflict more sorrows on Nigerians. Not only did they inherit both the ineptitude and corruption of the previous owners, they have also perfected the art of exploiting and cheating consumers through the use of a dubious billing system called estimated billing.
So, instead of taking responsibility for their dubious acquisition of these assets and gross ineptitude in running them, consumers are made to subsidise their operational costs. By a deliberate policy of refusing to provide prepaid meters, Nigerians, who do not enjoy more than fours hours of daily electricity supply, according to the CRDC, are made to pay for services not rendered. Of greater worry is the seeming helplessness of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, a regulatory agency whose orders are routinely flouted without any consequences.
It is a ringing indictment of successive administrations that Nigerians have been suffering this extent of power shortages. Years of criminal neglect, corrupt practices and inept management have brought about the gradual attenuation of a modestly efficient public utility inherited from the colonial administrators to the extent that it can no longer cope with a rapidly growing population and an economy recently designated as the largest in Africa. Successive administrations, starting with that of Obasanjo, between 1999 and 2007, to the current one headed by Jonathan, have sunk billions of dollars into the revival of the sector, believed to be paramount in the country’s long term development. Yet, on the strength of the available evidence, not much has changed to give people hope.
Obasanjo, who signed the Electric Power Reform Bill into law in 2005, allegedly spent about $16 billion on the power sector, according to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and Dimeji Bankole, a former Speaker, House of Representatives. But some of the members of his economic team said the amount was less than $4 billion. Also weighing into the debate, the current Minister of Power, Chinedu Nebo, said about $3.5 billion had been invested annually in the power sector in the last 10 years.
Before leaving, Obasanjo had promised Nigerians 6,000MW of electricity by the end of his tenure in 2007, to be upped to 10,000MW the following year. But all that Nigerians inherited from him were power plants that were supposed to run on gas but had no link to gas supply, and contractors that owned up during a mock probe by the House of Representatives to collecting money but not fulfilling the terms of their contracts.
Yar’Adua, who took over from Obasanjo, also reneged on his promise to deliver 6,000MW. The then Minister of Finance, Mansur Muhtar, reportedly said in 2009, “The 6000MW of electricity promised Nigerians by the President was a milestone. We are even targeting 11,000MW in 2011.” Where are we in 2014?
It is time to explore other sources of power generation. Apart from the numerous rivers available for hydro electricity generation, there is also the available sunshine for renewable energy. A few years ago, a global initiative developed in the Mediterranean, the Desertec Foundation, was planning to tap from the African sun to power the whole of Europe, which shows the viability of this source of renewable energy. Wind and coal are also some viable options that can be harnessed. If gas and water have failed Nigerians, there is nothing wrong in exploring other sources of energy. This is the real challenge.
