20th November, 2013
By Kanayo Esinulo
In a piece I did in June 2010 titled ‘Can President Jonathan Fix PHCN?’, I tried to recapture a discussion I had with a senior staff of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN. As the discussion went on, and at the right moment, I asked him why his organisation was finding it difficult to improve on its services, whether he and his colleagues knew how much hatred ordinary Nigerians had for them and whether the leadership of his company realised that the slow pace of development in Nigeria and the re-location of big industries and businesses to other African countries from Nigeria could be traced to poor electricity supply? The response I got was quite shocking and revealing.
In the piece, I wrote: Mind you, this was coming from a very senior staff of Manager level in our national electricity company. “A heartless mafia exists within the fold,” he began, “and it would not serve its strategic interest for PHCN to be run efficiently. For the company to function with any efficiency as is done in other well-managed economies, he said, the entrenched mafia within the system must be dislodged or fought and defeated.”
It seems to me obvious that with the historic events of 1 November 2013, when the 14 new owners of the unbundled PHCN received their certificates from top federal government functionaries at different locations across the country, that invincible but formidable mafia that has held the country in darkness all these years seems to have been dislodged, but not yet defeated. The day electricity supply becomes steady, reliable and uninterrupted, then the mafia has suffered irreversible defeat. It will be total victory for the Nigerian people and for our economy.
It is like a dream gradually becoming a reality. When the Obasanjo administration embarked on the exercise of unbundling the Nigerian Telecommunication sector, some thought it was a huge joke, a difficult project and a dream that may never translate to reality, given the character of the entrenched mafia in the telecom sector. But today, vulcanisers, food stuff vendors, and even Danfo drivers have phones with which they communicate. Soon, and this is gradually becoming the theme for discussion and conversation among many informed Nigerians, the good people of this country would begin to take steady and reliable power supply for granted. By successfully privatising the power sector, the federal government has truly demonstrated courage and the capacity to call the bluff from entrenched and deeply vested interests represented by a clique that has been making it possible to open up the power sector for expanded participation. Those who have been following developments in this area of our economy would easily give deserved credits to the Presidential Task Force on Power led by Engr. Beks Dagogo-Jack and the Ministry of Power under the care of Prof. Chinedu Nebo. Although the Jonathan administration gets the overall applause for this initial victory, the two men, in my view, ought to be lined up now for national awards when, God willing, darkness is finally defeated in Nigeria in the coming months and years.
Sure, a healthy and functional power sector unlocks a caged and trapped economy. It is what retired Brigadier-General Godwin Alabi-Isama repeatedly referred to in his controversial book as ‘the centre of gravity’. With the sector about to be unchained, opened up for market forces to participate and possibly dominate and the mafia routed and dislodged, the entire economy would be the immediate and ultimate beneficiary. Many jobs would result from the unbundling of PHCN to actually neutralise the losses that may occur in the unbundled PHCN, many of who do not deserve our sympathy at all. If the power company was efficiently run, some in its workforce would have left the place since because they had no business being there in the first place. The bad ones contributed, in no small measure, to the slow pace of Nigeria’s growth and development. This new dawn about to happen to the power sector not only would create new jobs and new opportunities, but would encourage the industries and businesses that re-located to other climes to consider coming back to what is unarguably ‘Africa’s largest market’. Artisans who deserted their trade in favour of ‘commercial motorcycling’ due to poor electricity supply may go back to their small businesses, importers of generator sets and their Chinese partners may have to change their line of business or re-direct the destination of their ships to other economies.
In fact, there was no way PHCN could have done more for the economy than it is doing at the moment. While blaming its leadership for the rot in the system and its inability to deliver on its mandate, the Nigerian politician should also share in the disaster that ‘NEPA’ became. What did we expect from an organisation that suffered unceasingly from unnecessary political interferences, and what a retired senior staff at the place called ‘imposed contractors and suppliers’ who could not distinguish between 4mm and 10mm copper wires? Once an LPO was issued by an internal collaborator, the ‘political supplier’, as we discreetly call him, went all out looking for the cheapest in the market. That is precisely why faults keep recurring after attending to them, because materials used in correcting the faults were inferior and substandard, I was reliably informed. Upright men and women in the system who saw evil in what was going on and the level of corruption openly practised were told to shut up or ship out. In fact, there were unreported cases of a few informed and more conscious staff who tried to resist this imposition of suppliers by forces outside the system and how the company was generally run, were suppressed or shamelessly compromised. The total failure of PHCN to deliver could, easily, be traced to so many factors that the leadership of the holding company could not control. But its cowardice in succumbing to political pressure in a sector that required un-adulterated professionalism did not reduce or minimise its culpability. The PHCN leadership shares the blame with our mindless politicians and ‘militicians’.
Nigerians expect so much from the Canadian firm, Manitoba Hydro International, which is handling the transmission end of the power reform project, and also from the companies that were handed their certificates of ownership on 1 November. Nigerians expect all the new players in the sector to help change the economy and their lives. We remember that soon after the telecom sector was privatised, MTN, Econet (now Airtel), Multilinks and later the game changer, Glo, came on board in style, and things began to happen in our lives. The agony of staying till the small hours at the Allen Avenue, Ikeja office of NITEL to make an overseas call gradually became history. As the communications companies established their presence and started operations in earnest, Nigerians knew that a new dawn had arrived. That is exactly what we expect from the new power companies that have just taken over. They do not expect anything less.
Let me conclude by repeating what I stated in that my June 2010 piece earlier referred to: “If we get our electricity right this time, President Goodluck Jonathan would have made history, and if that is the only legacy his administration leaves behind this first term, it would be worth it and so be it. The two gentlemen that anchored this specific achievement, Engr. Dagogo-Jack and Prof. Nebo would be fondly remembered by Nigerians, as we remember always Dr. Ernest Ndukwe, who successfully anchored the telecom reform agenda for the Obasanjo administration, and today telephone has become so common and even so cheap that the poor can afford to profusely communicate with anyone whose number he has. It is well!
•Esinulo wrote this article for TheNEWS magazine