Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

Thirty million Nigerians don’t have access to electricity. This was revealed in Nsukka last week by the Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, during the First African International Conference/Workshop on Application of Nanotechnology to Energy, Health and Environment. He also used the occasion to announce government’s commitment to “providing electricity to all households through the Federal Ministry of Power under ‘Operation Light up Rural Nigeria Initiatives”. In fact a “comprehensive road map on access to power which will systematically connect households through grid and off-grid solutions is already in place”, and according to him, “the pilot programme will provide energy-efficient lighting to homes, streets and community centres with up-to-date solar technologies.”

He also spoke of a plan to replicate this pilot project across 36 states of the federation.

First, the minister’s 30 million figures are questionable. It is on record that late last year, he had said “the situation where only 25 per cent of Nigerians have access to electricity is a nightmare caused by human beings used by evil forces”. His Minister of State for Power, Zainab Kuchi, after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC), late last year also publicly declared “We have 160 million Nigerians now and we are only giving power to 40 million of that population, what it means is that there are about 120 million Nigerians that are without power and wish to buy power.” It is obvious government has no record of those who have access to electricity and those who do not and those who live in partial darkness.

But beyond government confusion about statistics in a country known for planning without facts and records, government new love for rural dwellers will mean the fate of 130 million Nigerian who live in partial darkness and scores of industries shut down because of energy problems now stand on the balance. Before embarking on this unnecessary dissipation of energy, Nigerians would have liked to see partial fulfillment of the promises government made when it sold off generating stations built from the sweat and blood of the people to government-favoured private concerns. As at last week, most part of the nation was in darkness in spite of raised expectations and promises of government that sunk between $25 and $51 billion over a period of 14 years before the energy sector was handed over to the new owners.

Unfortunately, because of government past history of insincerity and unfulfilled promises, many Nigerians will probably express cynicism about the project. Government case is not helped by the fact that we are embarking on this new wave of contracts on rural electrification when no one has been held accountable for the N7billion PDP frittered away on derailed rural electrification programme in 2010 by some members of the legislature and their fronts.

It will be recalled that EFCC on June 14, 2010, had accused both Godwin Elumelu, and, Senator Nicholas Ugbane, his counterpart as Senate Committee Chairman on Power of misappropriating over N10 billion of public funds. EFCC claimed the rural electrification exercise “were used as conduit pipes with which funds of the Rural Electrification Agency were siphoned and were awarded to companies either not pre-qualified to be awarded the contract, or were phoney or existing companies”. EFCC even went ahead to add other offences- ‘misappropriation of N500million to buy houses; diversion of REA’s funds; flouting of government’s rules on award of contracts and award of fictitious and unnecessary contracts without following due process.’ But once Justice M.G Umar of Abuja High Court absolved all the PDP men and their collaborators on March 24, 2012, claiming ‘he was unable to find a prima facie case or complaint disclosed in the proof of evidence against the respondent’, the government did not even bother to appeal. Between seven and 10 billion naira earmarked for rural electrification went down the drains.

It is perhaps for the above reason, many think the new government frenzy for award of new sets of multi-million contracts without first tracing the funds EFCC alleged ended in the bank accounts of some PDP officials is informed more by concern to raise money for 2015 elections than the advertised love of the rural dwellers, who currently live in their perfect bliss unlike the 130 million Nigerians who live in partial darkness and are slammed with outrageous arbitrary bills monthly, by new owners of the PHCN.

President Jonathan should therefore understand why most Nigerians who are under siege from all corners now believe his administration is at war with Nigerians. While they are treated as a conquered people by government functionaries, they have equally become captives of government licensed importers of substandard products and inefficient service providers who declare annual profit that will make investors in the home of capitalism in America and Europe green with envy. Or how does one explain a situation where the new PHCN owners behave like bandits forcing consumers to pay for energy they knew was never generated let alone supplied?

And in all this, government has refused to take responsibility. For the on-going energy crisis, government has absolved the new owners of the energy sector from blame just as it has exonerated itself. The minister has attributed the crisis to ‘non-availability of gas, infrastructure vandalism, sabotage in the sector and low water-level to power the hydro power plants’. The minister pretended to have forgotten it was government and not helpless victims of government inefficiency that awarded multimillion dollar contracts to repentant militants to secure our water-ways and the pipelines such as Trans Niger, Trans-Forcados, ELPS A pipeline, Alakiri-Onne LBVS, Afam VI IPP, all of which recently came under attack by vandals.

Similarly left out in the minister litany of woes is corruption which Nigerians and the international community consider the bane of the energy sector. While the president has continued to play the ostrich claiming corruption is greatly exaggerated in Nigeria, his own PDP warring party members have insisted the nation’s inability to generate 3000MW in 14 years was the result of corruption of their members.

If the minister chooses to discountenance the claim and counter-claim of corruption of PDP members, ignore the N7 billion rural electrification fund traced to PDP members, he cannot feign ignorance of a piece of information given to us by Solana Oluhmense early this week to the effect that two United Nations Special Rapporteurs sent a letter to our president in November 2013 demanding accountability for a total of $51billion sunk in Nigeria’s power sector in the past 10 years.

Successive PDP governments since 1999 have shown their agenda is PDP and not Nigeria. Obasanjo, who inherited only a total power capacity of 1500mw in 1999, had also said while inaugurating the Nigeria Integrated Power Project (NIPP) in 2001 that the scheme would add 10,000MW to the national grid before the end of his term in 2007 and hoped his successors would be driven with the same zeal and moves the planned target up to 20,000 MW by 2015. Dr Doyin Okupe late last year told Nigerians that “before the end of 2014, Nigerians’ long held dream of joining the worlds list of countries with uninterrupted power supply will be closer in reality than it has ever been.” President Jonathan himself had earlier said any Nigerian with generator would by 2014 have no need for them. The reality today is that we are generating 3717MW.

The government has by its antecedents of failed promises shown it is deficit in honour. This is why many Nigerians will see the government promise to provide “electricity to all households” as just another avenue to raise funds for the 2015 election.

Last week, all grieving parents had expected from a government that has for several months been on the defensive for its inability to protect from violent death, children in their schools and now, young graduates seeking employment was for the government to establish its relevance by making example of an unfeeling and insolent minister. Similarly, opinion leaders around the country were not just calling for the sack of the minister of internal affairs but his prosecution for criminal negligence following avoidable deaths of young Nigerian job seekers. But the response was typical President Jonathan. This was conveyed through the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who, with his characteristic zest which is often at variance with the mood of the moment, reeled out the content a new government policy ostensibly designed to assuage the raw feelings of aggrieved parents

Maku first informed us that as a demonstration of the president’s displeasure with the March 15 tragedy, he has ordered the cancellation of the bungled recruitment exercise which most informed Nigerians already knew was nothing but a swindle organized by PDP swindlers who feed on the blood and sweat of the weak.

Maku also revealed that the president who always avoids hard decisions that may impact negatively on any of his trusted party men and women has set up a committee headed by the chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, Deaconess Joan Ayo. Other members include the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), David Paradang, who was excluded in the March 15 PDP deal, representatives of the Inspector-General of Police, Comptroller of the Nigeria Prison Service, Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and the Commandant-General of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. The committee is to conduct a new recruitment to fill the NIS vacancies.

Such mandate in itself was an indirect admission of government’s loss of confidence in its own bureaucracy and by inference in itself. Government after all is only as good as its bureaucracy which controls the water we drink, the roads we pass, the air we breathe, the education of our children, preservation of our culture and our dreams and aspirations as a nation. When it decays, society decays.

And finally, the minister delivered government’s message of hope to grieving parents; “three young members of the deceased families, one of which must be a female, are to be given automatic employment, so are all the injured currently receiving treatment in hospitals across the country”. To be sure of those who are qualified under the last category, we still have to wait for government definition of what constitutes an ‘injury’ since applicants experienced varying degree of injuries ranging from possible loss of limbs, of pregnancies, fractures, bruises and even psychological traumas.

For the survivors of the March 15 organized chaos and deaths who still eye NIS jobs, the gates have not been permanently closed, the competition has only become fiercer and their chances slimmer. But it is bad news for the hungry, the weak and the psychologically traumatized applicants who have roamed the streets in search of job for years and appear physically healthy only in appearance. Remember in 2008, when such people were subjected to physical exercise as parts of similar recruitment process, 43 of a little less than 200,000 that participated that year collapsed with 17 ending up in the mortuary.

But if this ‘death as a precondition for employment’ policy was conceived by government as a problem-solving activity involving choosing between many alternatives at minimal cost, it is dead on arrival. It will likely turn out to be a piece of bad policy that cannot be implemented.

First, one is not even sure if a government already overwhelmed by daily harvests of deaths from mindless killings by Boko Haram and some suspected Fulani herdsmen have had time to take inventory of the victims of March 15 disaster. Probably for that reason, the government is yet to release to the public the names of the dead and the injured scattered all over the country. Until such an exercise, we may not know if some of the victims are the only siblings of their parents. Even if they are not, in a society where a parents strive to train a child hoping he would after graduation take over the training of his junior ones, how are we sure some of the diseased siblings are qualified to be absorbed either into the highly coveted NIS or into the bureaucracy?

And who, if one may ask, are the family members of those diseased pregnant women? Their parents or their spouses? If the latter, will the husband be allowed to present his own brothers and sister? And if that happens, will that not defeat this government ‘creative’ policy of compensating the dead through offer of job to her siblings? And in such circumstances, can we foreclose the possibility of the parents of the dead pregnant job seeker suing government and their son in-law? But beyond litigation, an attempt to deprive a diseased pregnant job seeker of her own compensation will be a betrayal of Dr Patience Jonathan advocacy for equality of men and women in the sharing of dividends of democracy. That, in my view, is one war the president can ill afford as the preparation for 2015 gathers momentum

And still more questions. In the case of the diseased without female sibling, will her family lose out or be allowed to sell its quota? And it cannot get any messier if the diseased is from a polygamous home where the wives had just had an altercation before the tragedy of one of the family members? Don’t forget in Africa, the belief that the ‘witch cried last night, the child dies in the morning, who does not know the witch killed the child’, still holds.

Obviously this is one piece of policy that is not implementable. And as usual, the voice is behind it is that of the same PDP dealers and wheelers who in attempt to cover up the theft of 1.7 trillion mandated the president to tell Nigerians that the economy would collapse without the removal of fuel subsidy. It is the same voice of PDP men who often reap where they did not sow who were behind the president’s miscalculated attempt to change the name of University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University. And in recent times, voice of PDP parasites behind the president’s ill-advised decision to fritter away public funds on welcoming entertainers into PDP fold in Ilorin, Sokoto and Katsina while the nation was on fire. Except those PDP dealers and wheelers manipulating the president, everyone knows the president would have secured more mileage by arranging a meeting with bereaved families of slain school pupils or survivors of bombed markets.

But as argued on this pages these past three years of PDP’s self serving policies, greed, lawlessness and irresponsibility, as recently demonstrated in NIS and has been the practice in NNPC, PPPRA, the aviation sector as well as other government ministries and parastatals, are indicative of absence of governance following President Jonathan abdication of government to PDP dealers and wheelers. Our ‘grievous mistake’ as our inimitable Solana Olumhense pointed out in The Guardian last Sunday is the wrong assumption that we have a government. What we have, he says is a “pretence-performance, like children playing in the sand”. It is just as well this grim verdict is coming from one of Nigeria’s most respected independent minded journalist and not from Pa Bisi Akande, the opposition APC interim chairman who not too long ago likened President Jonathan government to that which operates at a kindergarten level.

For the uninformed African leaders who believe Africa was indeed the white man’s burden, Basil Davidson long ago proved that we were all at the same level of development as at the time the Europeans came to disrupt our society. They left behind seeds of social dislocations that will guarantee our continued dependency. Here they set the north against the south. In Congo their legacy after over 300 years were about five university graduates, 600 priests and a Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba with only three years of formal schooling and of course the country final descent to anarchy.

All the same, the celebration of our enslavement and continuous post-colonial exploitation by leaders who lack sense of history has come and gone. Not even some of the legacies of colonial occupation such as the mindless killings of about 59 innocent school children in their dormitories at the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi area of Yobe State, the death of about 90 by car bomb in Maiduguiri and scores of our soldiers through ambush by Boko Haram insurgents dampened the enthusiasm of a desperate government bent on giving false impression that all is well. It was all pomp and pageantry as we played the ostrich celebrating unity in Abuja far away from the theatre of wars going on in Maduguiri, Yobe and Adamawa; restive Niger creeks and the killing field Jos has become.

The highpoint of the event was the public recognition of 100 recipients of Nigerian centenary award. The purpose of this contribution is not to belittle the great achievements of some of the recipients. But because Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia while our hip hop new generation of impatient youths have no patience for history, we all need to remind ourselves that many of those currently being celebrated were in fact the architects of our current crisis of nationhood as a result of some of their personal failings as leaders. It is also aimed at telling the current leaders that ‘If gold rust, what shall iron do’? Those that have pillaged our land in the last 14 years will surely not escape the judgment of history because leadership is a privilege that carries great responsibility.

First, lacking a sense of history, we gave pride of place to the British Queen, Lord Frederick Lugard and his mistress who coined the name Nigeria. As it was under slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, our current leaders still cannot see that globalization which allows some people to decide what we eat, the water we drink, the road we traverse and the education we receive and our economic policy is but another name for slavery.

But let us turn our attention to inheritors of power- Sardauna and Balewa favoured by Britain, Zik, dismissed as untrustworthy and Awo, despised as a communist. The four political rivals got their awards as nationalists. But nationalism itself is not often motivated by altruism. We can ask in retrospect that if indeed their struggle was driven by selflessness, how come they destroyed the house they jointly built out of egoism barely three years after the departure of the colonial masters?

Let us start with Awo, a leader whose admirers considered sinned more against than sinning. Yes the sage was a great leader, the ‘best president Nigeria never had’. But then Awo like most leaders became an oligarch forgetting that compromise is the ‘greatest badge of honour’ in a democracy, which for all intents and purposes, is synonymous with ‘rule of gangs’ with conflicting interests. Akintola was Awo’s scourge against the British and his closest ally in his exploits in the western region between 1952 and 1959. But let us imagine for a moment that Awo had been able to manage his success and recalcitrant deputy; we probably wouldn’t have had an illegal state of emergency by vindictive federal government of NPC and NCNC, the 1965 rigged western regional election, the mayhem that followed as the youths of the West resolved to make Akintola who sowed the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Similarly, the seeds of today mutual suspicion was sowed by his two other awardees – Balewa and Zik who out of greed for power destroyed the West. Let us imagine for a moment that Zik and Balewa had allowed the West to constitutionally resolve its intra-party problem, that Balewa did not encourage the federal police to stay aloof while a few Akintola supporters realising the game was up, started breaking heads with chairs; that the duo did not manipulate the parliament to approve illegal declaration of state of emergency in the West, that a kangaroo parliamentary did not sit to retroactively upturn the Privy Council ruling that confirmed Akintola was constitutionally removed from office, that Balewa who approved illegal declaration of emergency in the West did not choose to play the ostrich, celebrating with visiting commonwealth leaders while the West had descended to anarchy, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a coup by five ideologically confused majors, the elimination of the leadership of the North in January 1965 and the mindless killing of Igbo military officers in July 1966.

I similarly do not begrudge Shehu Shagari, Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, and Abdul-Salami Abubakar, for the honours bestowed on them by President Jonathan. But let us imagine Shagari’s administration had not embarked on gluttonous consumption that erased the foreign reserve left behind in 1979 by Obasanjo in less than three years and did not go ahead to rig the 1983 election. And we can also look back on what could have been if Buhari, who took over, had not behaved like a reactionary military wing of the then ruling National Party of Nigeria; if his regime had not clamped professor Ambrose Alli, Olabisi Onabanjo, Adekunle Ajasin, Lateef Jakande and others in the opposition who expended their allocations more on free and compulsory education, and establishment of new universities while NPN and NPP governors who took foreign loans for unexecuted projects were let off the hook.

As for Ibrahim Babangida, let us also imagine what could have been if he had not embraced IMF liberalisation economic policy that finally destroyed our naira and budding industries, did not fraudulently take us through eight years of ‘transition without end’, finally annulling the most credible election in our nation’s history and arrogantly handing power over to a quisling he put in charge of a contraption called Interim National Government. Of course Abacha, another celebrated centenary award recipient has been described appropriately by our Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka ‘as a psychopath under whose regime assassinations became routine and torture and other forms of barbarism were enthroned as the norm of governance’; and a leader ‘who placed this nation under siege during an unrelenting reign of terror that is barely different from the current rampage of Boko Haram.’

As for Abdul Salami Abubakar, let us reflect on what would have been the fate of our nation if he had not, through act of omission or commission, allowed the winner of the 1993 election, MKO Abiola who spent four years of his expected presidency in prison to be murdered under his nose. Of course we would not have had an Obasanjo presidency imposing an ailing Yar’Adua and ill-prepared President Jonathan and his politics of subterfuge, intolerance of dissent and disregard for rule of law.

Sanusi might be everything supporters of president Jonathan’s apparent vindictive action against his five years ally say he is- Proud, reckless and unrestrained; strutting around like a feudal lord and lacking in grace to resign from a government whose policies he disagreed with. But then, Sanusi at the end is a Nigerian. And it is for this reason I think his comparison with central bank governors of other nations where the governors of their apex banks will not openly castigate their Government can be very odious. What we have in some of those societies is enlightened leadership governed by laws and restrained by established institutions from witch hunting their best including whistle blowers.

But here as Saro Wiwa reminded us in his satire about the pervasive corruption in our land, ‘Africa kills its sun’. Sanusi in spite of his objectionable style was while in office our nation’s pride wherever he went in the world. He was a recipient of two global awards: the global award for Central Bank Governor of the Year, as well as for Central Bank Governor of the Year for Africa. He was also listed by The TIME magazine in its TIMES 100 list of most influential people of 2011.

As it is always the case in Africa where leaders have no regard for public opinion and where leaders openly boast of their absolute power to sacrifice the messenger, the focus of Sanusi’s crusade-unremitted 20 billion dollar oil revenue, has changed to how much he deployed as promotional outlays, spent on private guards, lunch for police men, legal and professional fees, intervention projects and other unarguably questionable donations.

And with shocking finality, the AGF has put an end to the debate. ‘NNPC is required to pay into the Federation Account the ‘net revenue’ as opposed to the ‘gross revenue’. He is “of the respectful view that only the net revenue from the upstream petroleum operations of the NPDC should be paid into the federation account by the NNPC. This is more so as the federating units do not contribute to the funding of upstream petroleum operations of the NNPC and its subsidiary.” Government is therefore free to treat NNPC account as ATM as an opposition leader has observed.

The hunter has become the hunted. And part of the rough tactics of a government unnerved by Sanusi initial 49.8 billion dollars gaffe, was dusting up the eight months old Financial Council Report and other investigating bodies, which according to government “indicate clearly that Mallam Sanusi Lamido  Sanusi’s tenure has been characterized by various acts of financial recklessness and misconduct which are inconsistent with the administration’s vision of a Central Bank propelled by the core values of focused economic management and prudence”. Sanusi whose only curious ambition is to become the emir of Kano now has to fight for his integrity.

The case of Sanusi who still insists ‘You can suspend an individual, but you cannot suspend the truth’ is akin to the proverbial man on the tiger’s back. For close to five years he has been an accessory to government assault on Nigerians through half truths, fraudulent theories and outright falsehood. Precisely because Sanusi has tried to provide credibility for government anti people policies, his reckless donation of huge sums of money to universities and victims of natural disasters which were outside his core area of banking was ignored just like his obnoxious mannerism.

In the battle between the executive and the national assembly as to which arm was more corrupt, Sanusi was secretly hailed by the executive as he revealed to shocked Nigerians that the national assembly was gulping 25% of our annual budget while the later insisted there was much less to steal in its budget of N150b compared to an executive that presides over 50% of the nation’s budget.

In his banking reforms, whatever was the motive behind the August 2009 Sanusi led Central Bank intervention in Afribank, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank, Oceanic Bank and Finbank , the outcome was a tragedy for thousands of Nigerians who were rendered jobless and thousands more who lost their life savings and gratuities invested in shares of the affected banks. The major beneficiary of Sanusi ‘banking Tsunami’ turned out to be known PDP members and their friends. They reaped from the tragedy of helpless Nigerians by buying the banks after Sanusi’s injection of about 400 billion of public fund while ordinary investors with less than 200,000 shares were left with nothing. Until Sanusi unceremonious removal by government last week, he remained indifferent to the right of the public to know how much of the non performing loans were paid back by those who are closely associated with those in government.

Sanusi was also solidly behind government fraudulent privatization of the downstream sector of the oil industry. After a near monopoly for diesel market had been created for a few government favourites, who in turn swiftly proceed to build the largest tank farm in the world, cost of diesel which should ordinarily be cheaper on account of being a mere byproduct of refined petroleum shot up to about N170 per litre. Sanusi and Okonjo Iweala justified government assault on Nigerians on the fraudulent thesis that it was only the middle class who use diesel- powered generators that would suffer from a government policy designed to impose hardship on Nigerians. As it has turned out, the carcasses of Michellin, Dunlop and others that collapsed partly because of energy crisis and the flooding of the nation with substandard goods by beneficiaries of government import licence and wavers policy attest to the monumental fraud of such bogus claims.

Another government falsehood Sanusi dressed in garment of truth was the claim that the economy would collapse if the fuel subsidy was not removed. As it has turned out, it was all a ruse to cover up the theft of about N1.7 trillion by some of PDP appointed fuel importers who fraudulently forged papers to claim millions without importing a pint of fuel. It is on record that Sanusi staked everything as an economist to support this fraud in spite of the insistence of world class economists like the late professor Samuel Aluko that there was nothing like fuel subsidy but government imposition of petroleum tax on helpless Nigerians. Aluko drew a parallel between cost of imported Guinness beer from Britain and home brewed Guinness of the same quantity and quality to dismiss government fraudulent claim openly canvassed by Sanusi, Okonjo Iweala and other government apologists.

It is dangerous and suicidal when friends fight. Sanusi has been part of Jonathan government for five years and they know how to hurt each other. Having attacked Sanusi’s integrity, the government that has so much to hide has equally becomes very desperate. The government only on Monday directed Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) to audit the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). This is the same body whose report was said to be the basis of Sanusi’s suspension. This new probe is also coming shortly after an auditing by auditing giants, Coopers and Lybrand. Probing CBN whose 2013 audited account is ready afresh is far more important to government than NNPC whose account has not been audited for five years.

And as to the ‘missing’ 20 billion dollars, as far as government is concerned, the AGF has provided an alibi. But these are clear signs of panic and desperation. Like my good friend Chief Mike Ozechome, one of the latest combative defenders of president Jonathan’s response to Sanusi irritation said on Monday, ‘he who comes to equity must come with clean hands’. I think that equally applies to a government considered as one of the most corrupt in our nation’s history.

IT is just as well President Goodluck Jonathan never allows himself to be distracted by the hysterics of critics of his administration and his party, PDP. I think he has finally come to terms with this ceaseless attack in spite of his valiant efforts and giant achievements in the implementation of his own transformation agenda as parts of price of leadership. In recent times, in areas such as the aviation sector where giant steps are being made, his embattled minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah has chosen to celebrate these achievements on her own. In the case of the agriculture sector, the achievement is selfevident with the availability of cassava bread initially restricted to the table of the rich and those in government now within the reach of ordinary people. In far away Davos, Switzerland, the attention of the media was on the energy sector. Predictably, the greatest news-that we are finally going to have our own ‘made in Nigeria car’, which in government’s view, deserved celebration, got drowned in the cynics lamentation about the fraudulent implementation of the privatisation of the iron and steel sector, which they claim has sealed our hope of ever becoming an industrialized nation. But the happy news of a Nigerian dream car, first broken to the president by Carlos Chosen, the Managing Director of Nissan in Davos, Switzerland, is according to the government, ‘a boost to its National Automobile Policy’ whose objective ‘is to make new cars affordable to more Nigerians.’ Towards this end the government ‘will encourage Nissan to produce cars in the range of N1.2 to 1.5million. And as a demonstration of government seriousness, it has already set aside N240m to purchase some of the products that are still being expected to roll out from the plant in April for ‘SURE P’. To confirm the commitment of NISSAN, Carlos Chosen has indicated the company will bring its ‘global suppliers to guarantee quality spare parts and create a viable auto mobile support industry’. On its part, our own government is committed to building of ‘automotive test centres and laboratories to conduct vehicle hemoglobin comprehensive test of parts and component that will enhance overall product quality.’ Perhaps government is restricting our participation to this limited role because of its experience in the last 14 years. It will be recalled PDP administration at the onset of the fourth republic inherited a thriving automobile support industry. Michelin and Dunlop that have since relocated outside Nigeria were active, employing thousands of Nigerians, until the energy crisis coupled with government’s indiscriminate issuance of import licences and granting of waivers drove them out of the country. Similarly, there were about 16 viable battery manufacturing firms spread from Ojota, Trade fair complex in Lagos, through Keana, Nasarawa , Goni Gora, Chikun,and Sabo, all in Kaduna; Jimeta-Yola, Adamawa, Oluyole, Oyo and Nnewi in Anambra State. They suffered similar fate because of massive importation of both fairly used and sub-standard battery products from China, Korea and Turkey. In place of popular local brands like Exide and Ibeafo batteries, we today have as many brands as there are importers, most with a life span of six to 12 months. Much as it can be said that the president is implementing his party economic policies which many argue favour only the privileged and those in government, the president can take advantage of hindsight to find out why the efforts of ‘Nigerian dream car’ by past Nigerian governments failed? It is on record for instance that between 1970- 1980, the government, in conjunction with some automobile plants in Europe set up Peugeot Nigeria Ltd. (PAN), Kaduna, and Volkswagen of Nigeria Ltd. (VWON) Lagos; Anambra Motor Manufacturing Company (ANAMMCO), Enugu, Styr Nigeria Ltd., Bauchi, National Truck Manufacturers (NTM), Kano, and Leyland Nigeria Ltd. Ibadan. Prices of products of the locally assembled vehicles skyrocketed beyond the reach of Nigerians who resorted to fairly used (tokunbo) cars. Most of these government initiatives even after privatization by PDP government had by 2007 collapsed. Our problem is complex. Precisely because of greed, our reckless leaders have been unable to manage areas where we have comparative competitive advantage like large rubber plantations and byproducts of petroleum refined products to sustain and support the tyre and battery manufacture sectors. But this has been compounded by our past colonial masters who have resolved to retain our big market for their finished products or as dumping ground for their obsolete industrial complexes. The result of our new plan for local assembly plant for the Nigerian dream car is therefore not going to be different from what happened in the 1980s when France and Germany sold their refurbished obsolete plants to Nigeria after acquiring new technology. The new Nigeria assembly plant will probably roll out models already on their way out in the home country. In an environment where there are no rules and where government endlessly engages in issuance of import licenses and granting of waivers for party sympathizers, the local assembled cars will most certainly face competition from the state of the art, new, computerized and more fuel efficient products we cannot prevent from entering the Nigerian market. In a free market economy, how does a government that cannot control price of kerosene in spite of billions of subsidy maintain a regime of subsidy to keep price of the Nigeria dream car at N1.5m? Who are the share holders of the company? In an incisive opinion piece in this newspaper last week, Kunle Bello a retired Managing Director of M-Tel referred us to ‘The British Privatisation scheme that took off in 1979 and transferred about 50 companies to private hands of over 10million shareholders out of a population of about 52m and raising more than #50billion from the scheme for the exchequer. In the case of the French-regulated privatization, it led to allotment of shares by France’s ministry of finance to firms, employees, public and even private investors. He drew comparison between these and our own process whereby our own BPE (Bureau for Public Enterprises) according to House probe, merely supervised underhand dealings by privileged group as shown by the sales of Daily Times , NICON, Nigerian Newsprint Manufacturing Company (NNMC) Oku Iboku and, Aluminiium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) Ikot Abasi .etc. What is the share spread of the recently privatized energy sector whose new owners now plead for government for equity participation? In the ongoing energy sector summit, the minister of finance disclosed only this Monday that government is setting aside 500 million dollars to aid the new investors in the energy sector. What was the outcome of such bailouts for the aviation, textile and banking sectors? This is why Nigerians need more information on the ownership structure of the company that is saddled with the responsibility of manufacturing the Nigeria dream car at a government pegged price.