28 times in nine months? This is unacceptable
Nigerians hoping for a miracle turnaround of the power sector in the hands of its current minders may as well be waiting for Godot. The report last week that the power grid collapsed 28 times in the last nine months, hardly a surprise, merely reinforces the position of this newspaper on the need for a massive shakeup in the sector to avert its complete collapse. While the mere thought of the entire power system shutting down for an average of three times in a month should ordinarily alarm, more frightful is that an administration that promised to make a difference in the sector continues to skirt around the very issues behind them in the vain hope that things would somehow normalise.
Again, we go back to the problems, the very factors that informed the Power Sector Reform Act 2005. First was the lack of matching investments despite the upsurge in population and demand. Second, the archaic business models in use by the public utility firm under which tariff neither reflected the dictates of the market nor the services rendered. Third was the stifling corruption which ensured that nothing worked.
All of these informed the reasoning by the Federal Government, that the nation needed a new model that works, one that guarantees steady flow of investments and hence sustainability, one that adopts global best practices in service delivery.
Has anything changed after more than a decade and over three years after the completion of the privatisation process? If anything, things would appear to have gone worse. After a record spend by the government in excess of $16 billion, the nation remains at the miserable level of barely 6,000MW of electricity generation. As for the much hyped capital injection expected to have been delivered post-privatisation, this is yet to materialise to any appreciable degree. Worse is that the segment is currently hobbled by gas supply issues as a result of militancy in the Niger Delta, hence only a fraction of the entire generating capacity is actually put to work.
The story of the transmission system is not much different. Beyond the hype about concessioning to the Canadian firm, Manitoba, after the government opted to retain ownership, little else has changed with the system still prone to trip-offs and unimaginably high level of technical losses.
It is however the story of the distribution companies (Discos) that best exemplifies the depth of the malaise. The Discos, most of which possess neither the financial muscle nor the technical expertise have been a study in how public services should not run. Only a short while ago, the ill-served electricity consumer had thought that they were the lone victims of the inefficient lot; the latest revelation by the power, works and housing minister, Babatunde Fashola, would suggest something entirely different: the generating companies as indeed the gas suppliers are no less victims of these irresponsible operators.
Clearly, what we have at the moment is an emergency. What it calls for is drastic action. It calls for massive overhaul of the system and replacement of obsolete equipment; bringing in expertise. Of course, we understand that community issues hobbling gas supply are not issues to be resolved overnight; even at that, there must be some form of contingency plans by government to address the gas problem in the short, medium and the long term.
Again, the point bears restating that nothing will be lost by revisiting the so-called privatisation that has failed to deliver on its most basic objectives. The government, we have said it before, should not be so helpless as to allow a group of operators who have themselves shown no fidelity to signed agreements to hold the nation to ransom. What the sector needs at this time are not just tested hands but entities that have the means to turn things around. We must of course warn that the longer it takes the government to face these challenges headlong, the more costly it would be to the nation.
Given our experience, it would appear that the expectation of massive inflow of capital under a liberalised power sector is somewhat exaggerated. It seems therefore inevitable that the Federal Government will continue to take the lead until things stabilise. The surest way to give this practical effect is to fast-track the delivery of all outstanding projects under the National Integrated Power Projects while pushing more aggressively to broaden the energy mix to reduce the nation’s dependency on one source.
At this time, we cannot but recall that a contract for a 700 KV so-called national super-grid was awarded by the Jonathan administration in 2010 for $3.5 billion. How much has been spent on the project? Is the project, like many others awarded by the administration, botched?
