After many years of hoping against hope, Nigerians appear certain that they are in for a new deal with the newly inaugurated administration of Muhammadu Buhari.
The rise in expectation was borne out of the gush of renewed promises last Friday by Buhari during his inaugural speech at the Eagle Square, Abuja.
It would be recalled that Buhari had, during his speech raised a number of pertinent issues which he noted had hampered Nigeria’s growth, but none could have gladdened the heart of Nigerians as much as the issue of power which administrations before him had paid lip service to.
A cross section of Nigerians who spoke with BD SUNDAY said they were particularly lifted by the determination of the Buhari government to end the perennial power challenge in the country. They also welcomed the steps the government planned to take to end the lingering insurgency in parts of the North East, particularly the determination to relocate the Military command to Maiduguri, Borno State (that has borne the brunt of the Boko Haram deadly campaign since 2009). The analysts however, urge the president to hit the ground running in this respect, explaining that given the critical state in which the power sector is in the country today, the President must hit the ground running immediately.
Buhari at the inauguration said: “No single cause can be identified to explain Nigerian’s poor economic performance over the years than the power situation.”
“It is a national shame that an economy of 180 million generates only 4,000MW, and distributes even less. Continuous tinkering with the structures of power supply and distribution and close on $20billion expended since 1999 have only brought darkness, frustration, misery, and resignation among Nigerians. We will not allow this to go on. Careful studies are under way during this transition to identify the quickest, safest and most cost-effective way to bring light and relief to Nigerians,” he said.
According to the analysts, it was instructive that the President Buhari recognised the urgency of this need which was captured in his quotation from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which says “there is a tide in the affairs of man which, taken in the current, leads unto fortune, omitted, all the voyage/affairs of man are bound in miseries and sorrows”.
The affairs of Nigeria, they posited, had been bound in miseries and sorrows all these years because the leaders failed to recognise the tide in the country when there was current, pointing out that no time could have been more appropriate and opportune to fix the power problem than when petro-dollar was rolling into government coffers in quantum and on daily basis.
Muda Yusuf, director-general, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, expressed happiness that there is a seemingly determination on the part of government to solve the power problem once and for all.
Yusuf, however, said to rejuvenate the power sector, the government of Buhari must launch serious financial and regulatory interventions.
“Given our own peculiar situation or the fact that we are still developing, and given that we want to support businesses and create jobs, government needs to intervene to ensure that energy issue is resolved,” Yusuf said.
“In a developing economy, you do not put critical infrastructure in the hands of the private sector, especially in a situation where the private sector has issues with funding and capacity. President Obasanjo had to withdraw money (about $5 billion) from Excess Crude Account to fund the NIPPs. If you are expecting the private sector to invest $5 billion, do you think it would be as fast as that?” he asked.
“So in terms of power, government should play a role. It may be a contradiction of a sort to ask government to intervene when it has privatised. But my position is that it is a critical infrastructure, and for a developing economy, government should identify the bottlenecks and bail out,” he further said.
Suggesting ways to permanently move away from the power crisis, he said there was the need to end the current monopoly in the sector.
“If there is a failure in the power sector, just as it is now, nobody will blame generation or distribution companies, but they will all blame government. Have you ever seen anybody blame Ikeja or Eko disco? But you know that if your GSM line is not working, you don’t blame government, but telecoms companies. Since there is competition in that space, you can drop the line and switch to another. But there is no competition in power. When you are in Ikeja disco, you are hooked there. You can’t say that Eko disco is cheaper and you jump over to it, unless you pack to another location. So, it is still a monopoly environment,” he said.
In a letter written to Buhari, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), headed by Frank Udemba Jacobs, said the president can lift the power sector out of the doldrums if private sector investment in gas infrastructure is encouraged.
“Serious attention should be paid to the security of gas pipelines in view of the incessant vandalism that disrupts gas supply to turbines,” MAN said.
“The utilisation of renewable and non-renewable energy resources for power generation such as solar, coal and wind should be encouraged more vigorously,” the group added.
The President, the analysts advised, should build on the privatisation initiative of the Jonathan administration which appears to have been hijacked by cabals in the power sector, adding that the President needs to rise quickly to look into the privatisation processes with a view to dealing with all the challenges/obstacles in the sector that holds the key to the country’s economic growth.
Meanwhile, Buhari’s planned relocation of the military command to Maiduguri may have been criticized.
Recall that the President had said that the most immediate challenge confronting the country was the Boko Haram’s insurgency, emphasizing that
“victory cannot be achieved by basing the Command and Control Centre in Abuja. The command centre will be relocated to Maiduguri and remain until Boko Haram is completely subdued.”
But Balarabe Musa, a former governor of the old Kaduna State, and Olusegun Oshinowo, director general, Nigerian Employers Consultative Association (NECA), have taken opposite views.
While Oshinowo was more concerned with the process that led to the President’s decision, the former Kaduna boss said the decision was merely symbolic and that it would not yield any meaningful result, and advised rather that the President invest heavily in equipping the military.
“With the inauguration speech, I don’t think Buhari can do better than his processor (Goodluck Jonathan). Taking the military headquarters to Maiduguri will not solve the threats posed by Boko Haram. He should rather, be ready to invest heavily in the military. Moving the military headquarters to Maiduguri is not the issue. He should be thinking of motivating the soldiers to die for the country. At the moment, even Buhari agreed that he doesn’t even know who Boko Haram is. He should first study to know what Boko Haram is. He must learn to know the source of Boko Haram,” Balarabe Musa told BD SUNDAY.
He also said he was surprised that President Buhari did not mention what he would do for the victims of Boko Haram insurgence in the northeast and those behind the sponsorship of the sect responsible for the deaths of thousands of ordinary Nigerians.
“I have always suspected that the Nigerian government is the sponsor of Boko Haram for political reasons. They do it to destabilise the country so that it can be easily controlled and to deal with political enemies. Look at the amount of lives and property lost to Boko Haram. Look at how violence Boko Haram has been harassing common people. Have you ever wondered that the BoKo Haram insurgents had never attacked any presidential inauguration even though they have the capacity to so? How can this be explained? Nigerians should ask questions on the sponsorship of Boko Haram,” he said.
On his part, Oshinowo said the Nigerian President did not provide enough information in his inaugural speech for Nigerians to ascertain whether such decision was in the best interest of the country.
“I think we really need to review the decision. The questions to ask would be: is the decision taken as a result of proper assessments of the situation? Has it be found out that the inability of the military to arrest the situation on time was because its Headquarters’ base was in Abuja? Has the situation been properly diagnosed? There are several things we still need to know before agreeing whether the decision is the best or not,” he said.
According to him, the $20 billion sunk in the power sector in the last 16 years that the President Buhari lamented has only brought Nigerians darkness and frustration was managed when government was still in charge of the power sector and that the new regime should rather, look forward in order to effectively navigate the country out of the situation.
“The billions of dollars invested in the power sector that the President spoke about were managed by government; and all that are in the past now. The power sector is now managed by the private sector. At this point, we should be more forward-looking in order to consolidate on the current efforts,” he said.
Zebulon Agomuo, Chuka Uroko, Odinaka Anudu and Nathaniel Akhigbe
