Kenneth Olisaeloka, a faceless writer, sets out to do a hatchet job on Prof. Bart Nnaji, taking advantage of what seems like open season on the Honourable Minister. He or she probably has an axe to grind with the good professor, and reckons that this is as good a time as any to launch a vengeful attack. However, hatchet jobs are effective when they are backed by facts, logic, and a little detachment. For this writer, all three vanish as she attempts to suck it to the man, using any available verbal cudgel. Unfortunately for her, this has had the effect of merely leaving her floundering and thrashing like a jilted bride in this muddled piece.
Kenneth Olisaeloka, a faceless writer, sets out to do a hatchet job on Prof. Bart Nnaji, taking advantage of what seems like open season on the Honourable Minister. He or she probably has an axe to grind with the good professor, and reckons that this is as good a time as any to launch a vengeful attack. However, hatchet jobs are effective when they are backed by facts, logic, and a little detachment. For this writer, all three vanish as she attempts to suck it to the man, using any available verbal cudgel. Unfortunately for her, this has had the effect of merely leaving her floundering and thrashing like a jilted bride in this muddled piece.
Take the facts that she presented. Prof. Nnaji caused to be published in three national newspapers the list of PHCN headquarters’ staff that were redeployed to various successor companies. The exercise is to protect their jobs as PHCN is wound down, by ensuring that they are fixed in successor companies that are being privatized. In other words, this action was taken to ensure that headquarters staff would have jobs, post privatization. Here’s Olisaeloka’s warped account of this noble action:
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Prof. Nnaji went “out of his way and without decency to publish the names of disengaged workers in several pages of almost all Nigeria’s national newspapers which cost the Ministry clearly more than N100Million.”
It is troubling to also note that, in her blind fury, she fails to see the difference between an NIPP plant sited at Ala Oji in Imo State and the Geometric Power which is in Aba, Abia State, and proceeds to confuse one with the other! Thus, it is difficult to see which of the power plants – the one belonging to the Federal Government or the other founded by Prof. Nnaji – that she refers to in this disorderly write-up. It is also disturbing that the writer is in such a hurry that she does not bother to check up on facts, names and dates and insert them in her essay, but rather left them blank to continue with her tirade. Are we dealing with a serious character here?
Take her logic. The writer acknowledges that Prof. Nnaji boldly ventured into the power sector, “an area of business most Nigerian business men had hardly contemplated,” and thus “came closest” to validating his claim to be an “intellectual.” Does this imply that the “closest” way to validate one’s intellectual claims is by leaving the university system and launching into business? Again, how does one explain that in one breath, the writer agrees that Prof. Nnaji is a highly qualified robotics engineer and a trailblazer in independent power projects in Nigeria and, in another breath, declares him incompetent and without clues in the business?
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There is also the issue of a writer’s detachment. When someone who is clearly conversant with the politics of Enugu State begins to celebrate intellectuals and administrators from one senatorial zone as “cerebral” while putting down intellectuals and administrators from another senatorial zone as “grossly incompetent,” with “castration complex,” “flat convictions and vacuous audacity,” and actuated by “incestuous business ambitions and manipulations,” one begins to wonder whether there isn’t more to this than meets the eye. Is this politics, since this article is otherwise bereft of facts and logic?
Olisaeloka poses as someone with the ability to detect intellectual frauds but is it possible that this happy-go-lucky character could take the pains to study, let alone detail, what she wants the world to see as a fraud in the management of the Nigeria Power Sector Reform?
Prof. Nnaji has been in office as Minister of Power for less than a year. Within this period, however, he has brought significant changes to the key areas of power stabilization, marketing of the emerging power business among foreign investors, and his approach to welfare of the ordinary power sector worker. In spite of this, PHCN workers have, regrettably been misled by a few of their union leaders – and mischievous commentators such as Olisaeloka – to become obstacles to the power sector reform. Yet, it is an incontrovertible fact that Prof. Nnaji has done more to encourage PHCN workers to back the reforms than any of his predecessors: as a Presidential Adviser, he applied for and got Mr. President to approve payment of N57billion in monetization benefits to the workers (they were previously denied); he not only persuaded government to agree to a negotiated 50% salary increase but also got the President to approve a grant (not a loan) of N9billion to take care of this increase for the first three months; following the discovery that PHCN Superannuation Scheme (administered by the Unions and PHCN management) was depleted, Prof. Nnaji ordered the activation of the Pension Reform Act in the PHCN, which government will fund to the tune of about N8billion this year – to ensure that PHCN retirees continue to receive their due benefits; about 11,000 casual workers of the PHCN are now getting formal letters of engagement, as directed by Prof. Nnaji. Finally, government budgeted N157billion as severance pay package for those that may be affected by the privatization exercise and will continue to do this annually until the process is concluded and every single worker is taken care of.
What does Prof. Nnaji get in return for all of this? The Unions intermittently call out their members to embark on prayer and fasting sessions, so that Prof. Nnaji and his business will die. The workers have been led to fear that, like NITEL workers, they may not get severance benefits, and that privatization will lead to loss of jobs. This fear, though understandable, has no basis in fact or logic; it is commonsense that an expanded power sector such as is being created will result in increasing, not shrinking employment.
In the final analysis, Olisaeloka betrays a pardonable ignorance of the short, medium and long-term programmes that government is implementing to get Nigeria to her destination of 40,000MW – pardonable because she has chosen to discuss a topic that is beyond her depth of knowledge.
In the short term, government seeks to stabilize power supply. Prof. Nnaji met an epileptic and unstable power system that fluctuated wildly around 2,500MW. Through a combination of managerial changes, staff encouragement and routine repairs, the country achieved an unprecedented stable peak generation capacity of 4,400MW, less than six months after his assumption of office as Minister. Unfortunately, it is a fact in Nigeria that generation capacity often does not equal what consumers receive. Issues such as system collapses, local transformer and other equipment breakdowns, and the pecuniary scheming of unscrupulous PHCN field workers intervene to deny the available power to some homes and businesses, a fact to which every paying consumer in Nigeria can testify. Prof. Nnaji’s approach was to arrest the system collapses and then serve a warning that there will be repercussions for failures that result from deliberate, man-made errors. This approach works well because those who attempted to test the Minister’s will, and resort to the old way of doing “lucrative” things, were shown out of the system. This was how the quantum of power generated in the country went up without any additional effort to establish new power plants. Today, it has gone down by about 1000MW due to natural and man-made causes: the issue of low water levels in Kainji, combined with the abrupt, unannounced cutting off of gas supplies to key power plants in the country. The facts are verifiable.
In the medium term, government seeks to confront two important truths. The first is that its power plants are today contributing just about 2000MW of the power consumed in Nigeria. What they contribute is about 25% of their total installed capacity. The private sector, especially the international oil companies, contributes the balance. Why? The old government plants are plagued by age-old issues of maintenance, accountability and management capacity. Thus, as long as the PHCN remains, doing the same old things in the same old way, Nigeria cannot hope to get adequate, reliable and stable power from government plants. Second, and more important, Nigeria requires at least 40,000MW to attain adequate, reliable and stable power but we are generating less than five percent of this target at the moment. Government plans to produce between 10,000MW and 15,000MW by 2015 (an increase of between 25 and 30 per cent) in the medium term. This target is to be achieved (a) through the sale or concession of the PHCN successor companies to private investors who would be able to recover their total installed capacity, (b) the combined efforts of the Government’s National Integrated Power Projects (NIPPs) whose 10 plants will yield a combined capacity of an extra 5,000MW, and (c) other private independent power projects (such as Geometric Power) which shall begin to contribute power to the nation by the third quarter of this year. There are also efforts to establish emergency power plants and tap other viable, cost-effective renewable energy sources.
In the long term, government shall do what it can to attract the target investment of $10billion a year for the next 10 years, to be able to generate the 40,000MW of electricity that guarantees adequate, steady, and reliable power to Nigerian homes and businesses. Since this is a tall task for the Nigeria purse, the way out has been to encourage foreign investment to bring in the capital and expertise required to reach this target. It is gratifying that foreign investors have now seen Nigeria as a viable emerging power market. Over 300 world class power companies from more than 20 countries applied to own core shares or manage the 17 successor companies that are being privatized. The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) pruned this number to 135, and what happened? Investors who were left out and new ones are daily thronging the Ministry of Power and asking for leave to establish independent power plants in Nigeria. They are encouraged not only by a regime of local regulatory and investment guarantees but also by the ready availability of cheap foreign financial and equipment support.
At the local level, the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (the Bulk Trader), whose board was brought into being on the recommendation of Prof. Nnaji, guarantees that those who produce electricity in Nigeria and supply to distribution companies will henceforth be paid for what they produce and supply. The fear of supplying power that would not be paid for has been the major reason why no investor – local or foreign – has been enthusiastic to embark on power generation as a sole business venture in Nigeria. Second, the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), whose board was reconstituted on the recommendation of Prof. Nnaji, guarantees, among other things, that power generation and transmission companies will have a marginal return on their investments through a fair and equitable tariff regime.
On the foreign scene, the Chairman of the United States Ex-Im Bank recently signed an MOU with the government (represented by Prof. Nnaji) to support Nigeria’s power sector investors willing to purchase US made goods and services. The agreement is worth $1.5billion in loans and other support. In addition, Prof. Nnaji, on behalf of the government, has signed an MOU with General Electric Corporation, also of the United States, to support investors in power generation, in order to deliver a combined capacity of 10,000MW using GE’s technology. In an unprecedented show of support for the Reform, GE has also agreed to take up equity stake in companies that use their equipment for investment in Nigeria’s power sector. Following on the heels of the GE feat, the Daewoo Corporation of South Korea is also in discussions with Prof. Nnaji on how to key in on the reform.
What does all of this mean? First, it means that the government is creating the enabling environment to solve the endemic power sector problem in Nigeria and that the world has taken notice. Second, it also means that, in the short term, it is rather unrealistic to expect a magic leap in the quantum of power that Nigerian homes and businesses should expect at this time. In other words, it would be hasty to criticize Prof. Nnaji at this time, if there is a good understanding of the government strategy to address this inherited problem.
Prof. Nnaji continues to welcome criticism and encourage it. On our part, we make great efforts to explain where Nigeria is coming from and what President Goodluck Jonathan has mandated Prof. Nnaji to do to transform the sector, so that public commentators such as Olisaeloka will rise above their senatorial zone sentiments and hopefully become more knowledgeable and therefore more constructive in their criticism of national public policy.
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