Banning generators!

By Emeka Omeihe

Why do our leaders float ideas that regularly portray us as an unserious lot? Why do we elevate to the front burner, issues that should ordinarily come last in our list of priorities? And is it not increasingly getting obvious that those elected to superintend over the affairs of this country are incapable of coming to terms with the existential realities of our people?

These are some of the posers thrown up by the recent bill at the senate seeking to ban the importation of generators into this country. This is especially so, given the curious manner the bill scaled its first reading at the floor of the senate. The way things stand; it appears the senate is bent on passing the bill unless its attention is drawn to the many limitations and inherent contradictions in that piece of proposed legislation.

Introduced by the Senator representing Niger south district, Bima Enagi, the bill seeks to “prohibit/ban the importation of generating sets to curb the menace of environmental (air) pollution and to facilitate the development of the power sector.” In the main, it seeks to stop the use in this country of all categories of electricity generating sets which run on diesel/petrol or kerosene with immediate effect. Those in essential services such as medical institutions, airports, railway stations, elevators and research institutions are to be excluded from the ban even as it prescribed imprisonment of 10 years for any person who knowingly sells generating sets.

Ostensibly, the intention of the bill is to reduce the menace of environmental air pollution and accelerate the pace of development of the power sector. In that wise, the sponsor of the bill recognizes the dangers to our environment of pollution caused by our excessive reliance on generating sets and the inhibiting effects they have had on the development of the power sector. His is seemingly a therapeutic response that will achieve two objectives- check environmental pollution and accelerate the pace of development of the power sector.

Conceived this way, there is the temptation to view the new bill as stemming from patriotic fervor. But a critical appraisal easily exposes the hollowness and unrealistic nature of that piece of proposed legislation. Not only is it an impracticable proposition, it is an obvious invitation to crisis of unimaginable dimension. Enagi seemed to have envisaged this crisis when he sought to exclude essential services from the proposed ban. Ironically, the same reasons that lent the ban unworkable for people in essential services form the basis for its anticipated failure. For now, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the anticipated law to achieve the touted objectives do not exist.

The subsisting reality is that but for the alternative source of energy provided by these generators,  the country would have come to a sudden halt in the face of epileptic and very unreliable supplies from the public power sector. Generators came into prominence because of our inability or failure to generate enough energy despite the huge investments in that sector. This is so even in the face of our huge natural endowments in oil, gas, hydro and solar resources with an estimated potential to generate 12.522megawtts of electricity power from existing plants.

On the average, it is estimated that we are only able to generate about 4,000 megawatts which are grossly insufficient to serve the nation. That is why supplies from official sources have remained very appalling contributing to the collapse of many of our industries as they run on generators for most of the time.

Many of these industries were forced to relocate to neighboring countries where they found the investment climate favorable. Those still in business are trudging on courtesy of the generating sets. Curiously also, the bill did not factor these industries among the list of services to be excluded from the proposed ban. The bill neither envisaged the deadly effect of such a ban on marginally operating industries nor the loss of jobs it was bound to engender. By glossing over these critical realities, the ban will only end up destroying whatever productive engagements that managed to survive the harsh business climate in the country.

Yes, we have the challenge of environmental pollution from the fumes of the generating sets. There is also a school of thought that believes that our power sector has not been able to develop because of a cartel that benefit from the sale of generators. But that is not sufficient justification for the ban. Even then, the generators are by no means the only source of air pollution. There are thousand and one vehicles out there that pollute our environment daily. We can as well ban them.

More seriously, banning the use and importation of generating sets is akin to tackling a problem from the effect rather than the source. Generators came on handy because of our serial failure to squarely address the problems of the power sector. Being a consequence of that failure, it remains to be conjectured how it can be a solution. Unfortunately, there is little to show for the huge investments past leaders ploughed into the power sector including the $16 billion contracts and payment made by the Obasanjo regime to revive the power sector. It was estimated that through these investments, the country would be able to generate 40, 000 megawatts of power by the year 2020. We are at that magic year with our power output still hovering around 4,000 mw.

The issue is to muster the necessary political will to address all the challenges that have over the years stood against efficiency in the power sector. And among these are the cankerworm of official corruption, insecurity and inadequate investments in increasing generating and transmission capacities.

These are the realities we must come to terms with. Once we find solutions to the challenges of inadequate generation and supplies, once there are regular power supplies for industrial, official and domestic consumption, the demand for generators will fizzle out unilaterally. There will neither be the need to ban their importation nor any ground to send our suffering people to prison for the serial failure of our leaders to provide efficiently, public goods and services that constitute the basis of their legitimacy.

A senate that is alive to its responsibilities, one that has proper reading and appreciation of extant realities in the country, will be the last to pass that obnoxious bill into law. Rather, it should direct its energies to investigate how the humongous sums of money invested into the power sector over the years were incapable of even scratching the surface of the challenges of that sector. It would be a cheering development if the senate could burst the riddle in power sector that brought about this pass.

Even then, the sponsor of the bill admitted its inherent limitations by seeking to exempt those he categorized as essential services from the ban. Implicit in that is the reality that we can only dispense with generators at a huge consequence to the country. It is an idea whose time will take a very long time to come. That public power supply now comes after generators in the power supply matrix mirrors very vividly the inherent absurdity of the proposed ban.

There is also the incongruity in seeking to deprive private persons the liberty to make live comfortable for themselves through the use of generators. Many of such people may have died in the last few weeks when the heat wave became very unbearable but for the help of the generators.

We will be eager to see the use of generators quickly dispensed with. The huge foreign exchange depleted annually in the importation of that product will be saved and deployed to other productive engagements. This will no doubt speed up the pace of industrial development. But we must get our priorities right. The things that should come last must not be positioned first.

The proposed ban is anti-people and therefore a worthless piece of legislation that should not be allowed to see the light of the day. It will end up creating more problems than it is intended to solve.