Stalling the energy crisis

A few days ago, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua constituted an 11-man committee to give practical effect to his administration’s pledge to end the country’s long-running energy crisis within the shortest possible time. This is perhaps the most serious and direct initiative by the President to lift the sector from its years in prostrate position. Nine months into his administration, the state of the nation’s energy has remained one big embarrassment both to the regime as well as the nation. It has been so over the years.

The President had charged the committee to deliver to the country a total additional 6,000MW generation, transmission and distribution capacity within the next 18 months. Currently, the country’s available capacity hovers between 3,000 and 3,500MW. The committee is also asked to add to the national grid an extra 11,000MW of power generation capacity by 2011.

All of this is to be done, according to the President, through diverse sources while the 6,000 additional megawatts target would be met through the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP). The delivery of this objective is expected to be private sector-driven. Tagged, Presidential Committee for the Accelerated Expansion of Nigeria’s Power Infrastructure, the committee is chaired by the Minister of State for Energy (Power), Mrs. Fatima Balarabe Ibrahim.

There is indeed no doubt that the country’s energy sector is in crisis. The whole of the country is virtually in darkness and its productive capacity has remained stunted, if not degenerative, as a result. The president’s concern in the face of the sorry state of this vital sector is quite understandable and he is only lending his voice and weight to the frustration and the near resignation of the Nigerian people.
In modern societies, power remains the elixir for human development. It is the crucial element for any nation desirous of attending greater height. In the same way, it is central to our economic status and stature.

Rural development definitely cannot take off with our current power profile; nor can small-scale industry, which is the engine of economic growth and sophistication of any nation, thrive. It is instructive as well to remember that the administration’s Vision 2020 cannot be realized on the strength of the power capacity, just as delivering the Millennium Development Goals will remain a mere slogan.

We therefore welcome the President’s practical move to resuscitate the power sector. His plan is ambitious and we want to believe that he has thought about it properly and exhaustively. He really cannot afford to fail, as his predecessors did, especially the immediate past administration.

The country now knows that so much money was pumped into the sector by ex-President Obasanjo without a corresponding return in efficiency and effectiveness. Specifically, President Yar’Adua revealed recently that as much as $10 billion was thrown into the sector and all we see is nothing. Obasanjo even balkanized what was the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) to form 18 different companies under the process termed “unbundling” of the NEPA institution and the problem of the sector still remains unyielding and intractable.

It is just as bad that the country’s capacity of 3,000MW is available to a population of 140 million people. Experts say, to be comfortable, the country needs between 8,000MW and 10,000MW. Other countries drawing ranks with Nigeria, like Egypt and South Africa, have far more active and robust energy sector. While Egypt has 33,000MW, South Africa has 45,000MW, a far cry from where Nigeria is.

Working from these sorry paradigms, we want the President to put all he has into this new assault on this troubled sector. The truth is that even if giving Nigeria constant and steady power supply is all he can achieve as a President, he would have earned himself the respect and honour perhaps no Nigerian president has ever earned or been accorded.

Energy (electricity) touches every life and everything a people need to live in the contemporary times. It is the hub of development and advancement. We therefore give our support to the President. If he pulls it through, we are confident that Nigeria will be a tremendously changed country.