•Federal Government’s decision to review failing power firms is better late than never
Finally, the Federal Government decides to review privatised companies that have punched below the weight they claimed in 2013 when the Jonathan administration sold 11 distributing and 6 generating companies to well-connected groups.
Despite several calls in the last 30 months by the media, civil society organisations, and concerned citizens for a thorough review of these companies, the Buhari government appeared to have been over-optimistic about the capacity of many of the companies of which many citizens had warned from the beginning to have resulted from blatant acts of political tribalism and nepotism. We, therefore, consider the new decision of the government to get realistic about continued inefficiency in the energy sector good end-of-year news.
It is remarkable that the Buhari government is finally ready to end what appeared to be policy inconsistencies or contradictions within the cabinet. Just last year, the Minister of Power, Babatunde Fashola, said that four years of the power-sector privatisation was too short to judge its success, adding, “… there have been comments about how effective privatisation has been in the power sector and some people have called for its cancellation which I disagree with.” Contrastingly, the recent declaration by Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of State for Budget, marks a welcome change of attitude on the part of the Federal Government: “The power sector has been privatised but I’m sure every Nigerian can attest to the fact that the privatisation has not worked well, in the sense of what we sought to achieve in terms of power efficiency.”
Despite increase in the megawatts of electricity claimed to have been generated in the last two years, citizens still have as much darkness around them as before 2015. Similarly, the DisCos have spent the last two years complaining rather than distributing power. A thorough and objective review that sets out to find solutions to the country’s perennial power paralysis is direly needed.
By now, it should be obvious that many of the companies that ‘bought’ public utilities in 2013 are not up to par. After a case-by-case review, each company found to lack financial and technological capacity to deliver electricity ought to be relieved of such roles and given whatever is due to them by law. Nigeria’s development has been arrested for too long because of lack of reliable and constant power supply. Awareness of this problem should give all stakeholders concern that almost 60 years after independence, the country is groping in the dark to provide power, even after privatisation.
As it embarks on the long-awaited review, we urge the government to heed the confessions of Shamsuddeen Usman, former Minister of Planning and a key participant in the privatisation of PHCN in 2013: “If you look at all these DisCos and GenCos, unfortunately, some of us saw it that time, but there wasn’t much we could do because of the rush and political thing it had become. There is in each and every one of them at least one or two ‘big masquerades.’ That is not how to do privatisation. You don’t sell because of some people who are in the government. You sell because they have demonstrated the expertise and a lot of people rushed into it because they think electricity is like telecoms without even understanding the industry.”
Finally, we also urge the Federal Government to look critically at the Transmission Company in addition to the privatised companies. There is no sense in generating energy that cannot be transmitted to end users. It is self-delusion in the age of globalisation (which enables the Federal Government to, among other things, ask for assistance to fight climate change) to think that it is only Nigerians that should be given license to produce and deliver electricity.