December 17, 2014 | Author: Oduche Dennis Azih
On November 14, 2012, Uche Igwe published an article in The Punch titled “Take me back to Brasilia”, which was a report derived from a trip to Brazil. The writer was completely seduced by the idyllic ambience of a very well-planned not-so-new capital city, while he and other participants endeavoured to tackle the global cancer of corruption. He compared Brasilia with our Abuja, and of course Brazil with Nigeria, a very depressing exercise any day.
QUALITY OF LEADERSHIP
It has been stated time and again that those who presume to lead/rule us have consistently undermined Nigeria’s national interests in many ways. I will deal with only two in this exercise.
One is by refusing to apply rigorous analysis (late Prof Awojobi’s former students know exactly what this means) to the matter at hand, often from first principles. For example, a good number of people in government who speak to us ex-cathedra on electrical power have no business making the pronouncements routinely attributed to them. While every electricity consumer is entitled to air his frustrations, the same does not apply to proffering solutions to the obvious mess Nigerians have had to put up with all these years. To put it mildly, it is not an equal opportunity topic where all views are welcome. Those who have never heard of (let alone understood) the Laws of Thermodynamics have no business engaging in any meaningful discussion relating to thermal power plants, not to mention combined cycle, etc. The sheer lack of knowledge of issues associated with mass and energy balances explains why a bunch of individuals will build a power plant, neglect to arrange for the fuel and then try to explain away that lapse. Only in Nigeria!
It is also not obvious to most Nigerians that not all engineers are competent to contribute. This is due to personal limitations and specialisation in some narrow sub-disciplines. I reserve my comments about the other non-engineering professionals swarming all over the presidency and the Power Ministry and all known corridors of power in the name of consultants.
RECKLESSNESS AND POOR ETHICS
The other method whereby our leaders undermine the national interest is by going through all the right motions of planning, securing expert advice, paying for such advice, and then proceeding to abandon the logical next step. The reader can quite easily provide his own illustrations from current happenings. On my part, I wonder aloud whether or not we still have a contract with Manitoba Hydro. No, they are not necessarily my favourite company. After all, I had cause four years ago at a Newswatch/Celtel colloquium to trade tackles with those I believed to be the brightest and the best on the issue of power. How wrong was I in that assumption! I had proposed the idea of discontinuing the National Power Grid. The tragedy was that not one participant could articulate even one question to me over that arguably strange idea. My obvious loneliness eased a couple of months later when two people I had then not met published identical views. As Pat Utomi often says, there is still hope for this country, and keeping that hope alive is not an option. It is a duty that people of my age owe our grandchildren.
SOME NOT-SO-EASY THINGS WE MUST BE INVOLVED IN
Yes, back to Brazil. We recall that after many delays and postponement, our late President Yar’Adua finally undertook the state visit to Brazil. One will be right to assume that our policymakers in education, agriculture, oil & gas (NNPC), transport (railways, maritime, etc), aviation, housing & urban development, etc, must have done their homework so as to maximise the yield from that state visit. It is very sad to note that as President Yar’Adua departed Brazil the one picture burnt into our psyche and left for posterity on the covers of our many newspapers was of President Lula Da Silva presenting, of all things, a football to our president! A FOOTBALL? I will never recover from the shame of that incident. To say the least, even our football has gone to the dogs, but that is another story.
If we ignore the fact that Brazil is routinely mentioned in connection with BRIC (Brazil-Russia-India-China) emerging economies, with all the implied and recorded technological achievements, I would have been satisfied if our president had asked for and received just a bowl (mudu) of high-yielding soy beans as sample planting material. That would have shown that at least one person was thinking about the agricultural sector and our long-suffering and ignored farmers. The Brazilians are not that stingy. More than half its population traces its ancestry to Africa. It then becomes obvious that before and during the state visit to Brazil we did not ask for anything tangible. The entire trip, like many others, was one huge jamboree. Perhaps I should now mention a few of the many engineering and developmental achievements of Brazil so that we can fully appreciate the folly of going there and coming home with a football.
THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
As far back as 20 years ago the Brazilian auto industry was supplying engines to US General Motors among others. The Germans under Hitler developed biofuels during WW2 as a wartime necessity. It was the Brazilians who took the biofuel industry to maturity throughout its entire value chain.
RAILWAYS & MARITIME
Brazil builds its own locomotives, not just wagons and coaches. It builds its own ships, marine and naval, including submarines.
AVIATION
Embraer, its flagship aircraft company, is standing toe-to-toe in its chosen segment with the likes of Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and Fokker.
PETROLEUM; Oil & Gas
Petrobras, Brazil’s own NNPC, is a world leader taking care of its own backyard while selling its capabilities overseas including in Nigeria.
ELECTRIC POWER
Itaipu, a product of joint Brazilian-Italian engineering, for many years remained the largest gravity dam in the world with the largest installed output of 22,000Mw (that is, until China commissioned its 30,000Mw THREE GORGES Dam and Power Plant Project). Meanwhile, our policymakers are selling us the dummy that the entire complex on-again, off-again Mambilla Hydro Irrigation and Power Project of about 4,000Mw will be completed in the life of the Jonathan administration. Nothing could be further from the truth. It would be a monumental achievement if the Power Ministry manages to get the Mambilla Project to the bidding stage for construction within that time frame.
WE OVER-PROMISE & UNDER-DELIVER
Does anybody still remember the now expired promise to build us three refineries essentially overnight? That was about three NNPC GMDs ago. There is a whole lot of difference between governance and wishful thinking. I can go on and on.
STICK TO THE DIFFICULT ASSIGNMENTS
As a failed manufacturer, I used to introduce myself saying, “I am into engineering ceramics.” The typical response used to be: “What is that?” Our account officer at the defunct International Merchant Bank (IMB) once blurted out after a visit to my factory, “Why can’t you guys find something EASIER to do?” Tragic, to say the least. How could he have known that this writer had done structural engineering design work including qualification of as-builts inside the containment structures of nuclear power plants? With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) looking over my shoulders!
About 12 years ago, I literally climbed the seven mountains and crossed the seven valleys of our folklore to get the people at Shell Petroleum to listen to my organisation. We were in the very early stages of an engineering relationship long before the term local content became part of our lingo. And what did my bank do? Actually nothing that would have made either Shell or my people happy. Again, that’s Nigeria for you. And my banker wants me to do easy things. Perhaps I will, in my next life.
To handle tough jobs was EXACTLY why people like me went to school in the first place. How couldn’t my banker get it?
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