I still hold the view that the many arms of the NNPC constitute an unrepentant and irredeemable criminal enterprise. How I wish that the organisation would succeed in convincing most people otherwise.
NOT A MONEY PROBLEM
The past several governments of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, including the present one, have been busy throwing money piecemeal at the problem of power as if that would take care of several decades of outright neglect. The planning, if any, has been sub-optimal, a reflection of the "Yes-Prime-Minister" culture (aka Oga-at-the-Top) that pervades government decision making process, a veritable infinite series of hare-brained schemes.
THE ROLE OF OUTSIDERS AND OEMs
The complete absence of a homegrown planning capability, with a 20 to 40year time horizon, has made it possible for the field salesmen of every Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) in the western world, including the much revered Jeffrey Inmelt (the Salesman-in-Chief at GE), to have unfettered access to our Minister of Power and hence to our President. I shudder whenever these gentlemen claim to know what is best for Nigeria or that they step into the breach and plan for us. Even the newspapers offer the GE boss space to express his views whereas GE can afford to pay for its advertorials.
On another front, one can only imagine the negative impact of this state of affairs on our avowed policy thrust for Local Content. When was the last time anyone contemplated retubing by ourselves, a small or medium size boiler/heat exchanger at any of our power plants? It was only recently that we have come to recognise the place of the certified welder in this huge construction spread called Nigeria. However many gaps remain.
THE SAD STORY OF NETCO
Three decades ago I worked in one of the sevral design offices of Bechtel Power Corporation. Although I had moved on to other engineering endeavours, I was still excited on my return to Nigeria to learn that the Bechtel Group was to partner with the NNPC in its joint venture engineering subsidiary the National Engineering and Technical Company Limited (NETCO). The aim was to pursue the domestication of engineering capacity in Nigeria’s Oil and Gas industry. Most of the skills are routinely applicable to other sectors. The sad story of the breakdown of the JV after internecine squabbles with NAPIMS is for another day.
NETCO was always underutilized and that was the main reason for Bechtel Inc to pull out after eight years. None of this development can be gleaned from the rosy account of the state of affairs at NETCO posted on its website. The truth is that whatever good that NETCO has achieved today, stature, prestige, technology and man-hour jobs billed, pales in comparison to its true potential. With the deep pockets of the NNPC, the NETCO should have achieved a lot more for Nigeria, hence pulling other stunted sectors like power along. Sadly, in collaboration with NAPIMS, NETCO happily turned its offices into an avenue for farming out hundreds of thousand man-hours engineering design jobs to overseas outfits. So much for Local Content.
RESERVING RESPECT FOR (GOOD) IDEAS AND NOT PEOPLE
I recall that as an undergraduate at The University of Lagos I used to have a running battle with some of my professors, routinely disagreeing with them when the occasion demanded. Yes it was risky but then what can I say. Years later we remembered each other with genuine fondness. Both sides benefited from the exchanges including the many others who were often too scared even to whimper. I just wonder whether The Manhattan Project and the like could have succeeded if the participants were simply yes men!
I know it for a fact that a good many of the decision makers in government are actually not competent to discuss the many ramifications of electrical power. It is often generally assumed that once an observer is capable of listing the many ills of the electrical power conundrum (often only from the consumer perspective) then that implies knowledge about the viable solutions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Complaining with righteous indignation is basically cheap. Anyone, even a fool can do that. I have stated elsewhere that the issue of electrical power is not an equal opportunity topic. All views are certainly not welcome. Wrong and ill informed opinion constitute a serious distraction no matter how vigourously expressed. It is on record that at times the government falls for such for such falsehood because a good number of WELLMEANING individuals with the ear of the government said so.
GAS SUPPLY NATIONWIDE
Some 15years ago, I was present at the occasion of the commissioning of the NGC Metering Station at Alausa, Ikeja serving Gaslink Nig Limited. During the discussion event that followed at Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikeja, I had publicly drawn the nation's attention to the need to establish a comprehensive natural gas grid. The idea was to empower investors to make investment decisions with the availability of gas as a given. I was speaking from sad personal experience. At that very time I was firing my furnaces with trucked in LPG (often not available) sold to me at street retail price.
It is instructive to note that the Chairman of the occasion, a former NNPC guru(?), disagreed with me, giving of all reasons that the concept is expensive. That same issue came back to haunt us later during the later years of the same Obasanjo presidency when even the grossly inadequate NIPP power plants were built but had no gas supply. That this problem has persisted till today indicates the quality of the decisions that has emanated from Abuja over the years dating back to the days of the military.
REALLY, ARE OUR LEADERS KNOWLEDGEABLE?
A few years ago at the Newswatch Colloquium on Power where I was dragged in to be a participant (having shown up just to observe and listen), I was dismayed that not a single one of the leading lights present that day could get around to asking me even one question or answering the few simple ones that I asked. Sample: What is 1megawatt? Is it big or small? What can 1megawatt do? Can anyone of you visualise a 1megawatt pump? . . Resounding silence. That's your decision makers for you. If one cannot wrap his mind around 1megawatt, the basic unit of count, then any further discussion of 100, 400, or perhaps 1,200megawatts is meaningless. I am sick and tired of attending events where the smartest of the participants regales us with the sad news that industries HAVE STARTED RELOCATING TO GHANA! News indeed. Often figures are quoted credited to Alhaji Aliko Dangote to illustrate how dire the circumstances are. For goodness sake, we already know that.
TARIFF
Now let me tackle a very unpopular subject, tariff. The glitteratti of the Nigerian professional and social landscape, who on the average are far smarter than I am, studiously avoid this topic despite the data at their disposal. It was this same mindset that made it impossible to create the critical mass of enlightened opinion necessary to push through the very necessary removal of the wasteful fuel subsidy. No matter how long it takes, we will yet come the realisation that the removal of fuel subsidy remains one of the strong legs on which will ultimately rests the very economic survival of Nigeria. To be seen cavorting with the masses at the Gani Fawehinmi Park, became a badge of dubious honour. Well, somebody has to SAY IT AS IT IS (apologies Tunde Fagbenle). If not me, who?
THE BUSINESS MODEL MUST CHANGE
To make progress on the power front, the current business model must be changed. We must pay the going rate for EACH and EVERY input in the complex value chain that is the electrical power industry. The government cannot realistically give what it does not own. The mass, energy and value balances must be achieved. That explains why I am ready today to pay more than double the going rate of N12.83/kWh if I can get reliable/ uninterrupted power. It will surprise many that if this is done, I will actually pocket a minimum of 30% savings on my current total expenses for electricity. The savings are even more for the so-called Mr Ordinary Poorman who nonetheless still operates a tiny generator at home. Or Mr Vulcanizer at the corner who spends an arm and a leg operating a 1horsepower petrol engine to run his air pump, when he can spend less than a third of that running an electric motor for the same purpose. I hereby appeal to the more numerate members of the consuming public who are capable of rigourous analysis "from first principles" (apologies to my late Prof Awojobi) to do their own findings and share same with us.
The value I attach to not having the noise and fumes, the highly inflammable fuel in my trunk, spent engine oil in my home, etc is immeasurable. As for the mechanic, we will continue to exchange only pleasantries whenever we meet.
I wonder how many recall the tongue-in-cheek article in the Guardian Newspaper a couple of years ago titled, "My Generator is smaller than yours." All these illustrate how far down the slope we have slipped.
ENERGY SAVING APPLIANCES
I will then continue to devote my efforts to energy saving practices and procedures, lighting, other usage and appliances. I was seriously embarrassed to see the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) belatedly drag our President to present and publicly recommend energy-saving light bulbs on network TV. This came a full 4years after discerning consumers like myself started using them.
AN ENLIGHTENED CONSUMER IS THE BEST CUSTOMER
Mine is the kind of enlightened consumer attitude that the power companies can depend on to make investment decisions. Insisting that supply reliability MUST improve before the regulator (NERC) allows viable tariff will only postpone the improvements we all desperately desire. I have commented earlier on the strange resistance of MAN to a proper upward review of tariff. They should know better. They have the numbers in their own books.
The time to act is now. If the current tariff is anywhere near fair, then why on earth does NERC go through the convoluted process of justifying the fixed charges which make absolutely no sense? It is one thing to be billed a (high) tariff for power supplied. But to be billed even 1kobo, for whatever reason, when power is NOT supplied is a real hard sell. The patently false populist stance of the government seeking on the other hand to intervene to PROTECT the consumer from the rampaging(?) power companies is actually premature and at this time counterproductive. We are supposed to be a nation in a hurry to make up for the years lost to the locusts, aren't we?
NEPRI
For starters I had more than three years ago proposed to several knowledgeable individuals (who may perhaps understand and/or have a toehold in the corridors of power) to initiate the setup of the NIGERIAN ELECTRICAL POWER RESEARCH INSTITUTE as an independent organisation. The government will be perfectly free to ignore its findings and recommendations to its own peril. History will be the judge. I envisaged NEPRI modelled after EPRI of Palo Alto, California, completely free from the suffocating stranglehold of the government of the day. It is instructive that this writer did not get to know about EPRI while a student at Stanford. That eurika moment came many years later here in Nigeria when as a budding developer/manufacturer of inputs for the electrical power industry, I had to deal with the routine shenanigans of the unteachable management and staff of NEPA.
I am still waiting.
WHY NATIONAL GRID?
I am yet to run out of "crazy" ideas. In one forum I had proposed the idea of discontinuing the national power grid as a way of resolutely devolving power over power (no pun intended) to the states and/or the six geopolitical zones. Within three months I read of three different individual who had independently come to the same conclusion. One was/is an engineering professor at the University of Lagos, the second a foreign technologist who had come into Nigeria for an event. The most amazing was the last, wait for it, a lawyer somewhere within the decision making structure of the ruling party PDP in Ogun State! I immediately linked up with him.
I envisage a situation where for example the people of Benue, Taraba, Nassarawa and Kogi States after despairing of waiting for ever to get the power they need. They then decide to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, determine by themselves just how much power they need and proceed to build the power plant required. Each of these states is bigger than The Gambia many times over. I do not want to bother visualising what the Lagos State Government can and will do if we simply stop standing in its way. The single fact of approvals and contracts no longer being awarded at Abuja will probably provide an extra four percentage point boost to the growth rate of the GDP.
IMPLICATIONS OF FREE-MARKET
I cannot conclude without sharing some predictions of tough bad days ahead. There is a non-zero probability that some (a few) of the privatised power companies will yet go bankrupt, after the willingness of the government to keep bailing them out will have been stretched to its limit. Yes. That is the price of free enterprise, stupid! Much as they are evolving as we march along, the basic rules have been more or less clear. A poor effort at Due Diligence is nobody's fault but the investors.
There was a time when every "money-miss-road" aspired to own a brewery and did. The countryside until recently has been littered with the carcasses. While I hold very strong views about the government not adequately protecting the pioneer CDMA telecom operators (more like throwing them under the bus) I can also observe that failures in that sector already abound, and we are living with it. Just like every bored retired army general aspires to join David Mark in the Senate, all those who made the new money of the last decade and half just could not resist making a play for one or more of the power companies, the new game in town. Lo and behold, they won! Now comes the hard part. Winning has serious consequences. For one, a good many of the new power moguls are now required to actually work for a change, managing men and materials, a tough undertaking even in the best of circumstances.
The burden of sourcing for funds for both rehabilitation and network expansion is something they were supposed to have planned for. Did they? This burden will consume a good number of them. The government must be prepared to take them over, stabilise and sell them once again. The public had better get used to this evolving scenario.
INVITATION
Is there anyone out there, who is not otherwise engaged in looking for "chop money", ready to step up to the plate? Nigeria definitely needs A FEW GOOD MEN, . AND WOMEN! .Not contractors. . Let's get NEPRI off the ground. The one thing that I can promise is that it will outlive all of us, which gives me a very nice feeling.
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