The EFCC boss goofed by thinking Nigerians would shed tears over his disclosure on the national grid
Last week, the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr Ola Olukoyede, threw two bombshells that should really keep us thinking as a nation. One, he said one of the reasons we have been having frequent grid collapses is because contractors supplying equipment and materials for the maintenance of the grid have largely been supplying poor and substandard ones.
Two, that in the last 15 to 20 years, we have not achieved up to 20 per cent of our capital project implementation and execution.
Olukoyede told members of the House of Representatives Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes, who visited him at the headquarters of the commission in Abuja, last week, that Nigerians would weep if they know the extent of the rot that is throwing them into perpetual darkness.
Let’s hear from the horse’s mouth: “As I am talking to you now, we are grappling with electricity. If you see some of the investigation we are carrying out within the power sector, you will shed tears”.
Olukoyede added: “people who were awarded contracts to supply electricity equipment, instead of using what they call 9.0 gauge, they will go and buy 5.0. So every time you see the thing tripping off, the thing gets burnt, and all of that. It falters, and it collapses. It’s part of our problems”, Olukoyede said.
That is for the power sector.
Then the second bombshell: “We discovered that in the last 15 to 20 years, we have not done up to 20% of our capital project implementation and execution. And if we don’t do that, how do you want to have infrastructural development.
“How do you want to grow as a nation…”? “So, our mandate this year is to work with that directorate (Problem Risk Assessment and Control) and with the National Assembly to see if we can meet up to 50% of our execution of our capital project for the year.
“If we do 50%, we will be fine as a nation. Lack of implementation of this capital project is one of our major problems in Nigeria. And if we are able to tackle that effectively, we will make progress as a nation.”
I need somebody to help me here because the governments in power during the period were not giving us this ridiculously low performance figures. Although Olukoyede did not mention the specific time frame he was talking about, I doubt if any of the governments that could have fallen into the 15-20 years bracket ever said that was their best. Even then, we were saying the higher percentages they claimed were too low for a country that is thirsty for development. But we still celebrated the 50 or so percent average whenever any of them said they attained such.
So, how come we are now hearing that we did not achieve up to 20 per cent in a stretch of 15-20 years? Were we conned by those administrations? Or is it Olukoyede that is not getting his facts right?
The matter becomes particularly pathetic when we remember that some of these years in question were years of the locust when ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in the federal public service would make sure they exhaust their budget for every year so they could get more money the following year. What they did toward the end of the year was to award emergency contracts for all imaginary items that they actually had no need of. The idea was just to make sure they returned zero balance. So, what happened to the balance of their budgets if the country in the last 15 or so years did not achieve 20 per cent of capital projects? At least the released sums?
The EFCC boss’s disclosure that the commission has established a directorate of Problem Risk Assessment and Control that is working with the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation to look at releases against implementation of projects should have been a welcome one but for the fact that it is doubtful if the commission has the capacity for such extended responsibility.
The truth is; in a seriously corrupt nation like ours, the EFCC has a lot on its sleeves to begin to add other responsibilities to its original mandate. Even concerning its core mandate, it is doubtful if the commission is adequately staffed or equipped.
But, that is the problem with Nigeria. When an agency is not working, we simply shift its responsibility to others that are doing fairly well. Didn’t we have people who were supposed to certify the power sector materials and equipment as having been supplied to specification? Did we not have agencies that were supposed to monitor capital projects such that if we did not execute up to 20 per cent of them, the funds for the remaining 80 per cent (or whatever amount had been released in anticipation of a greater percentage of execution) was returned to government’s coffers? So, what is their role in all of these?
One can only hope that this additional responsibility would not constitute an unnecessary distraction that would end up making the EFCC a jack of all trades, master of none; a thing which would not augur well for the anti-corruption war.
As for the power sector, I want to believe that not many Nigerians would have been stunned by Olukoyede’s disclosure. After all, the power sector we have always known. Many Nigerians have had to suffer one way or the other from many of the corrupt officials in the sector, right from when it was still a government baby and, worse still, now that the sector has largely been privatised.
Before the introduction of prepaid meters, many of the workers of the then National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) who then carried ladders about, either to connect or disconnect electricity customers, were usually bribed by some customers who either did not have the money to pay or just did not think they should pay. Such customers would thereafter continue to enjoy power supply without paying a dime. Of course, someone must pay for every such bribe taken.
That must be one of the reasons why the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) preferred giving estimated bills to customers instead of giving them prepaid meters, apart from the companies’ insatiable appetite to reap where they did not sow. Today, the issue of estimated billing remains contentious despite successive administrations’ resolve to abolish it, even years after the sector was privatised.
Until now, we have always thought that the main reason we have been having persistent grid collapse is because the equipment are largely obsolete and weak and are therefore too fragile to carry the kind of load that they are now putting on it. Of course this makes sense. As we were taught in ‘O’ Level Economics, continual application of a factor of production to a fixed factor would, after some time begin to yield less than proportionate returns. If you keep adding load to a grid that has not been expanded for decades, the grid would keep rejecting such load at a point. Since this is logical, not many of us avert our minds to the kind of corruption that Olukoyede talked about concerning the grid. And even if we did, we never made it a perpetual point of reference as we do the factor of obsolete and weak equipment.
Add this to the fact that one national grid is inadequate to serve a country of over 200 million people and you think you have good enough reasons why we could tolerate the 10 grid collapses we have had this year alone. Indeed, the ‘Nigerian wonder’ would be that the collapse is not higher, given this ‘latest’ revelation that poor and substandard equipment have been supplying the oxygen that is keeping the grid alive.
Only last week on this page, I told Africans and other migrants in the United States who are sad that Donald Trump won the presidential election not to weep for America but they should weep for their own countries. Disclosures such as the ones made by the EFCC boss are enough to make us shed tears, as he said; but we seem immune to shock. Nothing worries us as a people, especially about our own country. Many Nigerians who are out of the country would probably have remained at home if only there is reliable power supply because power is pivotal to everything we do. If we get the power sector right, plants would hum at full capacity. Many artisans would be gainfully engaged; our hospitals would run more efficiently, and so on.
But, how can we have light in a situation where contractors who supply electrical cables and other equipment for the power sector supply poor and substandard ones? It is these same people who would be telling us sweet tales about how constant power supply is in the United States and other places. Is that the way their counterparts who render the same services to the American power companies behave to their country?
Unfortunately, we seem not perturbed as a people to insist that things must change in our own country. Most of us are like frogs that are looking for a cool place to live. We are looking for ‘Olorunsogo’ (places made by some other people even if with the help of God) as if the ‘Olorunsogo’ was made great by some benevolent spirits. Even though many of us won’t mind to live in Surulere (here in Lagos), meaning patience has its reward, we are not ready to be patient to give whatever it would take, to take the phrase ‘move the country forward’ from the lips of pretentious politicians and put meaning into it.
How can Nigerians who did not shed tears when, sometimes in July 2018, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), told us that it had recovered more than 693 containers of power equipment abandoned at ports due to tariff, now shed tears because of the grid? Six hundred and ninety-three CONTAINERS, with some of them stranded at the ports for about 15 years!
So, if Olukoyede expects anyone to be moved to tears by what he said, he would have to wait for Godot. As far as many, if not most Nigerians are concerned, they have since moved on, waiting for the next bombshell from heaven or the pit of hell. Nothing shocks us again as a people. And that is why we are where we are today.
I hate the expression: ‘where we find ourselves’ because we brought ourselves here by our complacency; we didn’t just find ourselves here. This we all know. So, why pretend?
