The Nation Newspaper

Tag: going

  • Going, going!!

    Going, going!!

    • We welcome government’s plan to sell five DisCos

    Eleven years after the privatisation of the power sector and the handing over of major facilities of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to 11 Distribution Companies (DisCos) and six Generating Companies (GenCos), the power supply situation in the country remains epileptic and dysfunctional. Yet, without adequate power supply, no efforts to revive the economy and achieve accelerated growth and productivity can yield concrete results. It has become obvious that most of the private entities that bought the former PHCN facilities lack either the technical or financial capacity to operate them efficiently and effectively. Thus, the sector has witnessed no meaningful improvement even after privatisation.
    From the beginning of this year, the power supply situation has worsened considerably even as the authorities have had to increase cost of supply to customers who presumably enjoy an average of 20 hours of electricity a day. Most consumers are given estimated bills which they find suspicious and fraudulent because no progress has been made towards providing meters for most users of electricity. It is obvious that the status quo is no longer sustainable and drastic actions must be taken if the country is to break out of this debilitating power conundrum.
    It is against this background that the Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu, this week told members of the Senate Committee on Power, who visited him in his office, of government’s decision to sell DisCos being run by commercial banks or the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) to technical power operators with good reputation in utility management within the next three months. According to him, “We can no longer afford AMCON to run our DisCos. We can no longer afford the banks to run our DisCos. This is a technical industry and it must be run by technical experts”.
    The DisCos which fall into this category are the Abuja, Ibadan, Benin, Kaduna and Kano distribution companies. The minister also announced plans to unbundle the distribution companies along state lines. In his words, “Some of the DisCos are too big for efficiency. They are too big for effectiveness…So we are rearranging and restructuring the DisCos along state lines so that each state government will know the responsible DisCos for their states”. He revealed that the Oyo State government, for instance, had written the Federal Government stating its desire to exercise its right in the running of Ibadan DisCo. This is a request the Federal Government is apparently not averse to.
    However, the impression must not be created that the DisCos are the sole problems with the power sector, even though they owe the generating companies humongous amounts. The GenCos too complain of inadequate supply of gas and thus are unable to maximally upload power from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which is a Federal Government monopoly. The TCN laments incessant vandalisation of its facilities while over 120 of its projects across the country have reportedly remained uncompleted since 2001.

    Read Also: Govt to sell Abuja, Ibadan, Benin, Kaduna, Kano DisCos


    Experts are agreed that a far-reaching decentralisation of the power sector is key to unlocking its potential as a stimulant of accelerated economic growth. To its credit the President Muhammadu Buhari administration had set in motion the legal framework for such decentralisation and this has been further consolidated by the Tinubu administration. States have now been legally empowered to invest in and participate in the supply of electricity. Reports that there are steps towards the elimination of the artificial demarcation between generation and distribution of power such that entities perform both functions seamlessly are welcome and should have a positive impact.
    The challenge of transiting the country from the current power conundrum to a new era of uninterrupted power supply cannot be attained by one magical policy wand. It will be a learning process as tentative steps are taken towards the ultimate objective. For instance, governor Chukuma Soludo has suggested that along with the legal power accorded states to generate power, control over gas should be moved from the exclusive to the concurrent list. His suggestion should be given due consideration.
    Again, with the decentralisation of key aspects of the power supply chain, the continued existence of centralised transmission and a concomitant centralised national grid has become obsolete. It has become inevitable that mechanisms be devised to break the centre’s monopoly in these critical spheres.

  • Ujah: Pre-season going well

    Ujah: Pre-season going well

    With his first stint in the German Bundesliga failing to tick the right boxes, Cologne’s Anthony Ujah has a lot to prove when he returns to the championship this term.

    Mainz paid silly money, in Norwegian currency, to acquire him from Lillestrom in the summer of 2011 for a transfer fee believed to be worth around 3 million Euros including performance related incentives.

    But due to his lack of first team chances at the Coface Arena, the following season, he was farmed out on loan to  Bundesliga club Cologne, where he got his groove back.

    ”Preseason is going good. We are on our second phase of training camp in Austria right now. I got a slight knock but I am back fully to training.

    ”My expectations are nothing than helping my club to stay in the league at the end of the season as this is the target of every promoted team.

    ”If we achieve this, then we can set bigger targets in the coming seasons but first one at a time,” Anthony Ujah told SL10.ng.

    Cologne have been active in the transfer market in the close season, signing Japan international striker Yuya Osako from 1860 Munich.

    The former Lillestrom sensation is aware that competition for a first team shirt will be intense when the league resumes, unlike the previous two seasons, where he averaged 27 starts in the second – tier.

    ”It’s normal to have strong competitions at higher level as we are now. It’s going to be a long season so competition is healthy for the team,” the 23-year-old added.

    Cologne will welcome Hamburg to the RheinEnergie Stadion on August 23 in their opening match of the 2014-2015 campaign.

  • Serena going through ‘difficult period’

    Serena going through ‘difficult period’

    Serena Williams is going through a “difficult period”, her coach Patrick Mouratoglou has said.

    World No1 Williams suffered her earliest Wimbledon defeat since 2005 last month as she lost to France’s Alize Cornet in the third round at SW19.

    The 32-year-old American has not been past the fourth round of a Grand Slam in 2014, but Mouratoglou said she is already focused on attempting to regain her form at the US Open next month and also denied suggestions of a rift between the pair.

    “Serena is clearly going through a difficult period. But since Wimbledon, we have had long hours of talks and we are getting back to work,” Mouratoglou told Tennis Magazine France.

    “Today she is in the mood to get back to training so she can return even stronger. At no time was there any question of us stopping our collaboration.

    “I have never discussed private matters and I am not going to talk about them now. There have been difficult things. For sure, Serena is in a difficult phase but I will leave it there.”

  • Abati going gung-ho

    Abati going gung-ho

    He seems to have gone off da hook, to put it the way of today’s teenagers when they describe an exciting performance by one of their ilk. We speak, of course, of presidential spokesman Dr Reuben Abati in his latest tango with the ‘enemies’ of his boss. A doctor of Philosophy, lawyer and ace columnist, cerebral Abati has as his current object of ‘hate and strafing’, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, former police officer, former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and former presidential candidate.

    We have laboured to make the distinction between the twain to point out that any ‘word war’ between them would be utterly ill-matched. When, therefore, Ribadu threw a barb at the Presidency last Saturday from far away Kaduna (reported on Sunday), Abati’s missiles followed swiftly behind, harsh, unsparing and violating all rules of engagement.

    Irrepressible Ribadu had hacked hard at the Presidency when he addressed the Students’ Representatives Council of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in Kaduna State describing Nigeria’s democracy as one full of tyranny while proclaiming Nigeria a sinking ship. A master of atmospherics who knows how to seize the moment, Ribadu sized up his audience and dug in thus: “The tragedy of our democracy is that it is one in which the yearnings of the youth are stamped down in order to perpetuate a tyranny of interests. Tyranny it is when a certain slim range of people impose their private interests on the majority; tyranny it is when the agents of change are left on the cliff of unemployment, poverty, insecurity, substandard education and, worst still, policies destroyed by our heritage of corruption.”

    Ribadu said much more to a pliable yet discerning audience with all the rich and far-reaching nuances of his treatise. In deed, what he insinuated at and left unsaid is far longer and deeper than the published speech.

    Dr Abati, too being no novice to the art of the word, read through and between Ribadu’s thick lines. It is no doubt a kick to the underbelly of the Jonathan’s administration, a damning verdict and condemnation. But most importantly, he spoke the truth largely, the harsh truth to obdurate power. But Abati whose government has just given itself a most-flattering mid-term pass mark would not bear an enfant terrible rousing rabble; one that had apparently enjoyed the ‘largesse’ of the same government in numerous ways.

    Abati, therefore, laid it thick on Ribadu’s back and promptly reminded him the tree from which his totem was carved. He described Ribadu’s statement as false, hypocritical and self-serving. He digs in: “The Presidency finds it sad and deplorable that Ribadu has resorted to shameless wolf-crying, peddling of arrant falsehood and the denigration of the elected government of his fatherland in furtherance of his selfish quest for continued national political relevance after his wholesale rejection by Nigerian voters in 2011.”

    Then a go for the jugular: “There can be no doubt that nothing else but blind ambition for an office for which he is clearly unfit is driving Ribadu to infer that an administration led by a President, who welcomed him back from his self-imposed exile, restored his rank in the Nigeria Police to save him from the shame of demotion and converted his dismissal from service to retirement has now become tyrannical and anti-people.”

    What more to add than that Abati may have slaked the vengeful thirst of his principal(s) but in all his doing, he largely left his job undone. Or better still, he undid his job and he keeps doing himself in as Americans say. Put plainly, Abati has lost his innocence and has let go, gamboling and enjoying a new-found role of an attack dog apparently in contest for relevance with his colleague, the top hound, Dr Doyin Okupe. Ha, this ‘relevance’ thing again. Perhaps all of us Nigerians are travelling in one relevance boat?

  • Jonathan going Obasanjo’s way

    Jonathan going Obasanjo’s way

    When recently former president Olusegun Obasanjo unleashed a tirade against President Goodluck Jonathan, I had observed in this column that Obasanjo has embarked on a journey which nobody dared when he held sway without severe repercussions. This conclusion was largely informed by his strong aversion to and intolerance of criticisms especially from public functionaries.

    Then, you dare criticize or challenge his influence at the risk of having all manner of subterfuge pulled against you including but not limited to unleashing the all powerful EFCC just to settle scores. And those who had the effrontery to nurse presidential ambition without his consent saw the rough side of him. Ask former Rivers state Governor Peter Odili how he had to chicken out of his presidential ambition at the last minute. And what happened to Audu Ogbeh the then national chairman of the PDP for attempting to assert his independence?

    Such was the high level of intolerance of that era that many had likened him to a dictator masquerading as a democrat. Then, the fear of Obasanjo was the beginning of wisdom.

    It was therefore curious reading Obasanjo’s criticisms of Jonathan on sundry issues and even leading a coalition of the PDP governors and the party’s National Working Committee against him. We saw how the party’s decision in the Adamawa crisis was upturned to spite the president and the party’s national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. We saw how the election of the chairman, Board of Trustees of the party was severally stalled until just last week when Jonathan woke up from the slumber and tried to rescue himself from an apparent loss of control of the party. Obasanjo was said to be the unseen hand in all those events to whittle down the powers of Jonathan.

    All these tended to portray the picture of a weak president or one who was bereft of the right ideas on how to confront the mounting challenges increasingly eroding the credibility of his regime. Questions were raised as to why in and out of government, Obasanjo still remained the dominant character shaping the course of events. This became more puzzling given that even when he is known to have fallen out of favour with the government, Jonathan did not seem to have a handle on him.

    Not unexpectedly, the scenario began to raise some possibilities in the minds of discerning members of the public. Some of these were that perhaps, Jonathan was afraid of Obasanjo, his towering stature and background as an army general. The fact that he literally picked and installed him both as a vice president and in his present capacity, further created doubts as to whether Jonathan could possibly turn against his mentor. But all these doubts began to fizzle out last week with some actions initiated by the president to regain firm control of his party and the government and unambiguously reassert his capacity to bite. So it was when in a pre-determined meeting at the seat of government, a new body known as the PDP Governors Forum emerged with Akwa Ibom state Governor, Godswill Akpabio as chairman.

    Apparently buoyed by the success of that election, Akpabio was to announce soon after that the new outfit became imperative to enable them do away with the Judases in their midst. This was a veiled reference to some PDP governors known to be anti-Jonathan. Among them is Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers state who is also the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum NGF. Not only has he been very critical of the Jonathan administration, the move is part of the strategy to weaken the growing influence of the NGF which he leads and his loyalty to Obasanjo. It was for the same reason that election into that body was stalled with the government making frantic efforts to see to it that he does not return.

    Since then, Tukur has been telling whoever cared to hear that the PDP will field a consensus candidate for that post come May. That candidate can be any person but definitely not Amaechi. It is also very instructive that Akpabio emerged from the South-south as the new leader of the PDP governors. That choice definitely forecloses the chances of Amaechi irrespective of the support he enjoys from some of his colleagues and governors of the opposition parties.

    With that, Jonathan has put at bay the overbearing influence Obasanjo on the NGF and PDP governors which in the last couple of months had generated tension and paralyzed activities in that party. We also saw how key personages loyal to Obasanjo have been edged out of their posts in the party including that of the national secretary.

    So who says Jonathan cannot bite? Even Jonathan with his seemingly gentle mien and non controversial disposition could also succumb to the prism that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Jonathan, like Obasanjo his mentor has definitely succumbed to the corrupting influences of power and logic of self preservation. And in the matter of the election of the chairman of the Board of Trustees BOT of the party, he has also demonstrated very strikingly that he is no alien of the game of self survival.

    Loquacious Jerry Gana did the magic. His committee did the ‘wonderful’ job that enabled Jonathan to install Chief Tony Anenih as his choice BOT chairman without Obasanjo and haven did not fall. Obasanjo is no longer talking. He may have recoiled to his shells. Who says Jonathan has not succeeded in silencing him at least for now? The scenario playing out is akin to what Obasanjo did to Ibrahim Babangida and Atiku Abubakar when he was in power. Obasanjo may have after all, fallen victim of the monsters he created during his autocratic regime. It is nemesis. That is the danger in playing god with temporary power. That is the folly of those who see power as an end unto itself rather than a means to approximate public good. That is the inherent dysfunction of creating personality cult around leaders instead of building self-sustaining institutions and structures. It is largely on account of these institutional weaknesses that very ambitious and self-serving leaders manipulate the rules to satisfy their selfish predilections. Africa is replete with such characters and Jonathan is not immune to the dire repercussions of such monsters.

    At the centre of the current manipulations by Jonathan is his desire to run for another term. Though he is constitutionally entitled to another term, the circumstance of his ascension to power and the realities of the power equation in the country are such that some shoulders would be ruffled if he runs. That was the purport of the reminder by the Niger state Governor Babangida Aliyu that he signed a single term pact with the governors before the 2011 elections.

    Events of the primaries of the PDP for that election, account for the escalation of insecurity in the country. The situation is bound to polarize with the current bickering in that party over the presidential ticket in 2015. Yet, Jonathan’s posters have once again appeared on the streets of Abuja. Tukur has said that he has a right to run. Other key officials like Kema Chikwe have equally been drumming up support for Jonathan’s 2015 ambition. Jonathan silence or ambivalence in the face of these weighty campaigns for him can be taken as acquiescence. And like his estranged godfather Obasanjo, he is set to uproot all obstacles to that ambition. How this will eventually work out and its larger repercussion for the polity is only a matter of time. But the future is loaded, very loaded indeed!

  • ‘No going back on LG financial autonomy’

    ‘No going back on LG financial autonomy’

    Member representing Anaocha/Dunukofia/Njikoka Federal Constituency of Anambra State, Honourable Uche Ekwunife has said the National Assembly will pursue financial autonomy for the local government system in the country in the ongoing constitution review.

    Hon Ekwunife who is the House of Representatives Committee Chairman on Environment spoke while briefing her constituents in the United Kingdom, UK.

    She said in a statement at the weekend that the National Assembly would ensure that the local government system gets financial autonomy to be able to meet the challenges facing it.

    “There is no going back on the financial autonomy for local government system because it will among other things bring development to the grassroots and the rural dwellers will feel the impact of democratic governance which President Goodluck Jonathan Transformation Agenda is all abouth”

    On the outcome of the Presidential Election in US, Ekwunife urged Nigerians to learn lessons from the US’ election, adding that the country and its leaders should be more interested in issues concerning governance instead of engaging in campaigns of calumny.

    “I want our leaders and politicians to learn lesson from President Brack Obama and his closet rival, Mitt Romney who engaged each other on campaign of issues and not what is obtainable in our democracy where our politicians engage each other in campaigns of character assassination”