Nigeria’s
epileptic power supply has taken a turn for the worse in recent months.
Despite investing over $30bn in the sector in the past 15 years, the
total electricity supply as of today is less than 1,400 megawatts for a
country of over 170 million people.
As
a result, the citizens and businesses have resorted to the use of
generators to the point where some industry experts are placing the
frontal cost, including imported fuel, as high as the size of the annual
national budget. This mire has provoked a wide range of debates with a
host of powerful voices overtly urging the President-elect, Muhammadu
Buhari, to scrap current power sector reform altogether. But any
temptation to toe that line readily translates to a right cause on the
wrong course. The problem is definitely not the policy by itself. The
gospel truth is that the highly celebrated “Road Map for Power Sector
Reform” under President Goodluck Jonathan has simply lost its bearings,
but can be redirected under a common sense leadership.
The
power road map was conceived on a charming premise that deregulation
and privatisation are twin catalysts for energy Eldorado. Although the
Jonathan people pursued the power agenda with admirable zeal, little did
they know that a reliable service delivery in the power sector required
more than mere theory. Yet, they marginalised a central theory on
privatisation which clearly states that the effectiveness as well as
efficiency is contingent upon the environment. The industry naïveté is
further exposed when considered that the Committee on Power would fail
to recognise that any concept which advocates corporate profits at the
crude expense of public interest cannot be ideal in this stage of
national development where an average citizen lives on less than one
dollar per day.
The United States of America offers a salutary
experience. Due to the importance of electricity in human welfare and
obvious complexities with privatisation, deregulation of the power
sector in the US did not begin until less than 25 years ago. And despite
what some analysts may view as its merits, only 16 out of America’s 50
states have seen sufficient benefits to exercise full deregulation of
electricity.
Simply put, Nigeria is not quite ripe for
deregulation and may seem to be in a paradox of sort. Yet, reversing the
policy is a recipe for a colossal disaster and thus no longer an
option. Even as it is necessary to review where and how the road map
lost its bearings, this piece is a blueprint to redirect the existing
programme towards efficient power delivery.
By all indications,
Nigeria’s power sector reform is fraught with difficult roadblocks but
none is more daunting than the fact that the policy implementation
veered off by failing to steer the original direction of the road map.
The first main detour was at the juncture where political cronyism
crossed the entire process. Major public electricity assets under the
privatisation exercise were sold off at ridiculously below-the-market
prices to a retinue of government cronies who not only lacked the
technical capacities and expertise but also the genuine interest to
drive home the power vehicle. The most perilous mishap to the road map
yet is that the implementation team placed all its eggs in one shaky
basket.
Contrary to the dictates of the road map, instead of
prudent diversification to alternative sources of energy, implementation
has been concentrated on gas-to-power. Worse still, a vital link of the
road map anchored through the Ministry of Petroleum Resources punctured
an important component of the very initiative on gas-to-power by
abandoning the nationwide gas pipeline master plan initiated under
President Olusegun Obasanjo, including the strategic East-North gas
pipeline from Calabar through Enugu and Ajaokuta to Kano. Today, not
only is over 80 per cent of Nigeria’s power to the National Grid
generated through thermal plants, most gas infrastructure is localised
to a volatile axis of the country. The result is that any illegal
tampering of the gas pipelines in the area, which is sadly very often,
is a nation in darkness.
The quickest way to remedy the
situation is to defy the odds and provide adequate gas supply to the
multitude of existing power plants in the country—and with immediate
effect. Nigeria’s power problem no longer hinges on lack of power
stations but failure to provide the plants with abundant natural gas in
the land. For instance, even though the country currently boasts over
two billion cubic feet of gas daily with a power generation capacity at
about 6,000 MW, the total output is less than 2,100 MW. The huge drop is
attributed to inadequate gas supply due to vandalism. According to the
Ministry of Power, the sector has been losing close to 120 to 150
million cubic feet of gas per day (MMScf/d) in the last eight weeks
along the Trans Forcardos and Escravos-Lagos pipelines. A mere 300
MMScf/d of gas loss at any point in time translates to a reduction of
about 1,000 MW of power supply.
But the whole excuse of
incessant vandalism of gas pipelines is roundly lame. The root cause of
the problem is squarely a failure in leadership. The different
conspiracy theories with the cabal within the business of electric
generator notwithstanding, any notion that a nation like Nigeria—a
country of over 170 million people with an estimated 50 per cent of
youth unemployment—cannot guard the pipeline to the mainstay of national
economy in this stage of technological advancement is nothing but the
continual tendency to give the dog a bad name.
There is a
plethora of data to support the foregoing opinion but the mere fact that
the country takes pride in awarding huge contracts to a barefaced
militant cabal for the security of gas and petroleum pipelines is a
compelling testimony of the failure in leadership. With a common sense
leadership in place, besides a galore of technological advances in the
surveillance industry, a common task force of army, navy, and a pool
from the unemployed university graduates should be adequate to address
the problem of vandalism pronto—even if it requires stationing armed
guards at every pole throughout the breadth and depth of the pipeline
network.
The second major recommendation is a two-pronged
approach on gas-to-power. With best intentions, the road map has already
raised power generation through natural gas to a commendable nameplate
capacity of over 11, 500 MW. Although some of the plants are still under
construction, a good number is completed but yet to be connected to the
pipelines or the national grid. Thus, the incoming Buhari government
should begin by beaming its searchlight on why development on some gas
powered plants is stalled. A case in point is Geometrix, the first
indigenous private generating plant located at Aba. It is mystifying
that this plant has been completed for years but hindered from coming on
stream by a toxic mix of politics and private sector monopoly.
The
next approach is to de-emphasise gas-to-power for the meantime and
stake earnest resources to other sources of energy. De-emphasising
gas-to-power is strategic. A careful implementation of such a policy not
only boosts power generation in different parts of the country, it will
also help to overcome overdependence on natural gas and the unending
chicanery with pipeline vandalism. Best of all, Nigeria will finally put
into use other huge natural resources long abandoned because of
indolent preference for oil and gas.
Thus far, though hydro
power accounts for less than 20 per cent of the generation to the
National Grid, there is an appreciable number of hydro plants in the
country. Currently, the hydro nameplate capacity stands at over 5,300 MW
which, of course, includes the $7bn 3050 MW Mambila power station and
others under construction. Similar to the agenda on gas-to-power, rather
than building more hydro plants, efforts should be made to ensure that
existing hydro projects are executed in a timely manner.
Perhaps,
renewable energy, such as solar, wind, biofuels, and traditional
biomass should not be ignored, but the most logical alternative for
serious public sector investment in the power generation today is
coal-to-power. Nigeria is globally ranked as the seventh largest in coal
deposit. Like her counterparts in other countries, particularly South
Africa, the United States of America, China, Indonesia, and Australia,
Nigeria is overdue to join the comity of nations that generate power
from coal. Unlike the typical hydroelectric power station that takes
anywhere from six to eight years before coming on stream, coal-fire
powered plants normally takes three to four years to build.
This
proposal is in line with the original Power Road map of 2010, which
specifically calls for continued public investment in renewable energy
and coal. It is also in agreement with Buhari’s election manifesto which
promised immediate revitalisation of coal-to-power.
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