Lynx Eye

How Power Ministry underdevelops Nigeria (I)

IN the two year scorecard published by the Federal Government recently, there are claims the government has increased power generation to 7,000 megawatts. Interestingly, the citizens, even the usually critical civil society have not interrogated that claim. But the veracity of it all is not really difficult to come by. Are Nigerians enjoying improved power supply?

To convince any doubting Thomas on its claim, the government should have given clear statistics of how the magic was achieved and through which power plants. In recent months, I have joined the Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy on oversight functions at the major power plants across the country. We have seen the extent of work on the inherited Power Projects and with the extent of work on the Power Plants at Kaduna, Afam and Zungeru, you will wonder where the additional megawatts came from.

Be that as it may, on Monday last week, the Senate Joint Committee comprising Committee on Gas Resources, Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy played host to stakeholders in the Power sector. Revelations from the investigative hearing tagged “urgent need to save the 215 MW Kaduna Power Plant,” were shocking and heart rendering. The only conclusion you derive from that sitting is simple-“How Power Ministry under develops Nigeria.”

At the investigative hearing, the joint sitting was told that the dual fired LPFO/Gas 215 MW Kaduna Power Plant had its initial location at in Kaduna Metropolis. It was moved to the current location at Kudeda also in Kaduna to ensure it was situated on the 614km Ajaokuta-Abuja-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline for easy access to gas. That made sense. But Nigerians at the Senate investigative hearing left the room in shame. Senators claimed they were moved to tears as a foreigner, chairman of GreenVille LPG, Eddy Van Den Broeke, exposed the outright unpatriotic acts by officials of the Ministry of Power in handling of the project.

Den Broeke told the sitting that following the Memorandum of Understanding entered into between the ministry and his company, a gas power plant was set up in Port Harcourt, while the company procured some 250 trucks for constant delivery of gas to Kaduna pending the completion of the gas pipeline. Part of the MOU signed with that company would also have yielded Nigeria storage tanks for gas at no cost.

To be continued

Re- Atiku returns to PDP

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is an astute politician, as the vice-president of Nigeria from May 29, 1999 to May 28, 2007, he contributed immensely to the success of the [former President Olusegun] Obasanjo administration as the president of Nigeria for eight consecutive years.

Atiku offended Obasanjo because he (Atiku) did not support the third term bid of his boss. Every sane Nigerian should praise Atiku for his position on Obasanjo’s abortive ambition. If Obasanjo had magnanimously caused “the famous Mandela option” to be a model in Nigeria, the country would have been better than it is today.

In the Sunday Tribune of November 26, 2017, Dr. Junaid Muhammed was reported to have said that “the former vice-president is an expired politician, who is in politics to make money and not to contribute positive quota to nation-building.” As of the time of writing this article, Atiku is 71-years-old while Buhari is 74-years-old. If Buhari, who is older than Atiku, has not expired and some people are campaigning for him ahead of 2019, Dr. Muhammed is likely to have some logical difficulty. On the allegation of Junaid that Atiku “is in politics to make money,” only the Nigerian politicians of the First and Second Republics were not in politics to make money. Apart from the aforementioned two groups of politicians, all the politicians in the other republics are kleptomaniacs. Many of the kleptomaniac politicians have kept their loots in foreign banks. ALhaji Atiku Abubakar has invested his monetary gains in politics to provide jobs for thousands of Nigerians. And one of such investments is the American University of Nigeria.

Also commenting on Atiku, former President Goodluck Jonathan publicly stated that Atiku would compete better in PDP and I support your position on agreeing with the former president. However, I vehemently disagree with Jonathan, who suggested that Atiku should “go and beg Obasanjo if he wants to realise his political ambition.” Obasanjo is not God and he has a vote. If the electors in Nigeria decide to vote for Atiku to become the next president from May 29, 2019, there is nothing Obasanjo can do to stop the wish of Nigerians. In any normal democracy, the elector is the king. It is in Nigeria that those we vote for try to reverse this universal axiom.

The two popular political parties in Nigeria, APC and PDP have resolved that the presidency be zoned to the North in the 2019 presidential election. I support the resolution of the two parties in the interest of peace. In 2023, the presidency should go to the South-Eastern zone of Nigeria. Every geopolitical zone in the country should have access to the political leadership of the country. Since there is no zone that does not have well qualified people who could be elected as the president of Nigeria, no zone of the country should monopolise the important post. In 2019, it is the turn of the North-East zone to produce the president. Between July 1966 and now, Nigeria has, at different periods in its evolution, had the following heads of state: North-West zone: General Muritala Mohammed, Alhaji Sehu Shagari, General Sani Abacha, General Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua; North-Central zone: General Yakubu Gowon, General Ibrahim Babangida and General Abdulsalam Abubakar; North-East zone: none. So, if the North-East zone is still regarded as a part of Northern Nigeria, all other geopolitical zones in Nigeria should for God’s sake allow the North-East to produce the president in 2019. If the people in the North-East zone want Atiku as their presidential candidate in 2019, the other zones should support the wish of the zone.