The Nasir El-Rufai led committee saddled with the review of the ownership structure of the three tiers of government in the Distribution Companies (DisCos) under Privatization has concluded its review of the activities in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI). In its submission reviewed by the National Economic Council (NEC) yesterday Thursday 23rd January, 2020, the government said there is no result to show for the N1.7 trillion financial support it gave to the sector in the last three years. It admits that the power sector has broken down completely, and it has!
The Privatization exercise was designed to fail as I highlighted in November 2013 almost 7 years now.
I have also on many occasions offered solutions and I will reiterate some in this article.
Now, the government is about to make the same mistake it made pre-privatization as it now plans to listen to the opinions of all manners of persons in the country and elsewhere to get solutions to the power sector. In its view, the government believes “that Nigerians must now be involved in finding solutions to the ‘broken’ sector”.
There is a problem with this approach as not all Nigerians are qualified to speak on the matter of power systems. For the records, only those with demonstrable experience of the issues with the power sector should.
The mistake the government made at the dawn of this millenium (year 2000) when it started to muse the idea of Privatization was not to listen to power systems engineers but pitching tent with lawyers, accountants and all those who have no experience in the subject matter. These people misled the government in the drive towards privatization of a scrapy power network. The result is estimated billing, network losses, and operators “sweating” the assets- taking the most from it financially, but not investing a dime. This has happened in every privatization exercise that is not well thought through!
Some might argue that Nigerian Engineers have been there all along but could not make the power sector work under NEPA, the forerunner of PHCN and the privatized industry. This is the sad truth. However, a “power engineer” without training and continuous professional development, under a military or civilian regime is quite different from a properly trained power engineer working under a privatized economy as the investor owners are there to make profit. It is true that most power engineers in Nigeria have over the years become “rusty” in their approach to power systems. Yet, they still retain the core principles of the subject matter.
To salvage the problem of the Nigerian Power Sector, I will recommend that the government invites Nigerians working in the power sector of developed economies with uninterruptible power supply in a national emergency discussion along with selected power engineers in Nigeria to chart a way forward. They will lead discussions with other technocrats in the legal, accounting, economics and related professions. This is to be tagged a Power System Architect.
Having said that, the arrangement with Siemens in the Nigerian Electrification Roadmap Project should be opened to ABB, GE, and other European players with demonstrable experience in the matters of power systems to work with the current operators (TCN, DisCos, and GenCos) to develop the Nigerian Power Sector. The starting point is to revamp the electricity networks, deal with gas supply constraints, and meter all electricity consumers. The problem is, you can’t sell an asset as a scrap and expect miracles from people who have no financial and technical capacity to turn it around. You need to fix it, take it to an optimal level of performance and hand it over to investors. We, at Idfon Power Engineering Consultants Limited, can assist the government in making this a reality.
The government itself admits that the subject of power systems is complex and not for the mediocres who parade themselves on Nigerian TVs and Twitter space with all sorts of propositions and suggestions. The chairman of the committee, Mallam Nasir El’Rufai was quoted as saying:”But the electricity industry is quite complex and technical and even those of us that have been asked to be members of the committee are learning a lot from the various presentations, sometimes conflicting presentations from various stakeholders in the power sector.”
The Privatization exercise started in the year 2000, exactly 20 years ago and we have only just realized it headed in the wrong direction when thoroughly bred Nigerians with demonstrable power system experience have been saying this all along. It is time to allow those of us who studied and practised in the subject area to take charge and put Nigeria on the path of industrialization. By training, we face complex problems as power systems engineers. What looks complex to other Nigerians have technical and social solutions based on power engineering principles.
We can avoid the mistakes of the last two decades, now wasted, by letting power engineers take charge, while working with other professionals in law, economics, accounting, sociology etc in a Power System Architect to put this right once and for all.
Please read other articles on my blog page for solutions to the Nigerian Power Problem.
Idowu Oyebanjo is a UK trained Power System Professional. He is the MD/CEO of Idfon Power Engineering Consultants (iPEC) Limited.
