Nigeria's False Industrial Revolution revisited: RAILWAYS, HEAVY LIFT TRANSPORT & PIPELINES, PLANNING Etc

Writing about a year ago on the above topic, I had endeavoured to lift the understandable pall of despondency covering Nigeria in its quest for a most belated industrial revolution. The editors at The Punch had more or less written Nigeria off because of the inability of its members to truly identify what little progress that has been made over the years. Sadly, they failed to see the possibilities going forward as in a Lee Kuan Yew's Singspore. For some sectors, like the automobile industry, which I extensively addressed in my earlier outing, the editors had swallowed hook line and sinker the position of the naysayers led by the then Japanese ambassador. It has been my hope that my effort to debunk the unsavory and false notions were successful. I had then promised interested readers further expose on other aspects of the requisite industrial revolution dealing with railways, pipelines and and other infrastructural development without which other heavy industries,  mining and even agriculture would have no hope for healthy development and growth. Having personally dabbled in Engineering Ceramics, I have had a few battle stories to tell as illustration. I also wanted to emphasize the vital role of planning and prioritization.

RAILWAYS AND HEAVY LIFT TRANSPORTATION

The Punch editorial continued, "Railways are also ubiquitous in Japan, Europe, India, South Korea, China and Brazil, all of which have industrialised. A government that refuses to break the state’s railway monopoly and open the sector to private investment, but continues to borrow from China to sink into an archaic system, is a joker."

I certainly agree with the above assertion. However our major problem is not borrowing per se from China or any other source, but what the borrowed funds are applied to achieve. Nigeria should identify potential local and foreign investors in the railway world and hand over the railways to them.

Using international best practices and standards, the government should invest ONLY in planning the railway network system, upgrades and new lines into the next quarter century, and then concession parts thereof on long term leases to the same major transporters who need no help to understand on which side their bread is buttered. Right now a good number of them are wasting scarce resources in an ego trip flying their personal flags in the airline industry. The proper planning horizon should necessarily encompass several administrations and also envisage the now not so new possibilities of power transition from one political party to another. We cannot continue holding ourselves hostage while blaming everybody else.

I believe that the Federal Government of Nigeria cannot afford to reveal to the citizens the real obstacles, mainly political paranoia, obstructing the development of the East-West (Calabar to Lagos) standard gauge rail line. The problem is definitely not finance. Between the World Bank, the IFC, AfDB, the various Arab, Saudi Arabian and Middle East development banks, US EXIM, the Japanese, Chinese and the Koreans, Ekene-Dili-Chukwu, Chanchangi, Dangote, and many other Nigerian entrepreneurs, there is enough available soft funds to do this particular project twice over. Our poorer neighbours including Ethiopia, Kenya and Mauritania still manage to attract capital for railway projects. All that the government of the day, any government, needs do is to tidy up the feasibility surveys and detailed planning. Politics need not intrude here.

Readers are advised to research the origin and evolution of the California Public Utilities Commission and similar entities in other climes. They are of great relevance in the legal and operational framework of privately owned major transportation infrastructure, hence providing a reliable template for new schemes.

PIPELINES

The same should apply to pipelines, both oil and gas. It is unfortunate that most of our bureaucrats do not appreciate that pipelines are primarily means of transportation. It is only a tiny segment of our supposedly enlightened elite who can wrap their minds around the concept of using pipelines for  moving solid minerals, such as in pumping of coal and other slurry over appreciable distances.

PLANNING? CART BEFORE THE HORSE

Here in Nigeria powerful interests typically carve out and corner aspects of major infrastructure and industrial schemes without benefit to the overall picture. It is not unusual, as in the case of Ajaokuta Steel and the Iwopin Pulp & Paper Mill, Oku Ibokun Pulp & Paper Mill, etc for political contractors to fall over one another in a mad scramble to get the contract for say government funded housing for workers yet to be employed. Twenty years down the road the plants are not completed, workers not hired, while the housing completed ahead of the logical sequence are more or less abandoned in no man's land. I find it extremely difficult to believe that I am smarter than those who make such patently stupid decisions. The simple explanation is greed, in the short term.

I recall my involvement about 20years ago with a then ongoing NNPC project called The Bonny Export Terminal Project. The terminal proper was already in place, standing on steel stilts in the middle of the Bonny River. Anyone going by boat to the Shell Bonny and/or NLNG Ltd Bonny plant cannot miss it. I  have trekked that platform.

The assignment was to heat-trace the heavy fuel oil pipeline. The fuel oil called HPFO which will normally congeal (and hence refuse to flow) at ambient or normal temperature needed to be kept hot. Meanwhile the science and engineering of providing the needed distributed heating was already mature. My organisation laid claim to having the most precise and reliable system worldwide which in this instance was besides the point. I had dutifully questioned the very rationale for the project, a very un-Nigerian thing for a contractor to do. Then as now, there was never going to be any volume of product to export or transship to other ports on Nigeria's southern coast. Then as now the refineries NEVER worked. And I said so to the engineering company overseeing the conceptual design and anticipated construction. Those were the days of Gen Sani Abacha as Head of State,  and Dan Etete as Minister of Petroleum. Readers should have already drawn their own conclusions about the duo. The main contractor was IPCO Limited. It was therefore no surprise that ultimately the project on which so much had been expended simply died. That is Nigeria for you. Similarly we can also point out for example a number of grain silos sited in places that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Watch out for more insight. That is if I  don't throw in the towel first! This Nigeria sef.