President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua may this month declare a state of emergency in the energy sector but electricity workers want government to pay attention to welfare of the workers instead.

 

By Emma Alozie

 

Baring any last minute change of plan, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua will declare his much awaited state of emergency this month. If he successfully does that he will be fulfilling the promise he made to Nigerians when he was seeking for their votes in 2007.

 

Already, Nigerians are not happy that one year after; he was sworn in as their president, energy problem seems to have worsened. His much talked about state of emergency in the sector appears to be mere campaign promise. Although, shortly after his swearing in, he set up a seven-man ad-hoc committee headed by the Rilwanu Lukeman to look into the problems of the sector. But that was the much he could do in the past one year.

His July promise may be a cheery news but there may be a big hurdle to cross. The National Union of Electricity Employees, NUEE, is threatening fire and brimstone should the President go ahead with the declaration. Joe Ajaero, general-secretary of the union told Newsworld that members of the union are not carried along by the President. His words: “the so called emergency is not new as throughout the period of Obasanjo’s regime was regarded as the period of emergency. The eight year period of Obasanjo was all emergency so we want to understand what this second emergency is all about and our place in it.”

 

Last week, the union called on its members nationwide on fasting and prayer session. The union wants government to first settle backlog of pension and gratuity of retired Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, staff before it could declare state of emergency in the power sector.

 

Like the former managing director of defunct NEPA, Joseph Makoju accused Obasanjo's ministers of misleading the former president on the money-guzzling National Integrated Power Project, NIPP, Ajaero accused politicians of insincerity and incompetence in matters concerning the power sector. He pointed out that the dearth of manpower in the sector; arising from the long embargo placed on employment, has denied PHCN the benefits of fresh hands to replace those who retire from the services every year. “There is apparently no line of communication between the minister in charge and the workers. PHCN workers are the least paid. Even workers in the newly created regulatory agency receive three times more than the average PHCN staff  and this has caused brain drain in the system. Closely related to this is the issue of employment embargo put in place for so long a time. Retired engineers are not being replaced and these politicians don't understand that this does not augur well for the sector,” he concluded.

 

The story of the power sector in Nigeria according to experts goes beyond emergency declaration. While submitting the report of the ad-hoc committee to the president, Rilwanu Lukman, who has been a major player in the energy and power sector for decades lucidly, enumerated the many challenges facing the power sector. He harped on the troubles of the Niger Delta that hampers the inflow of gas to the many power stations across the country. “Sixty to Seventy per cent of the country's electricity requirement would be dependent on gas, while the remaining are hydro, coal and solar. Unless there is peace in the Niger Delta, the nation's quest for adequate power supply would be a mirage,” Lukman added.   

The former secretary general of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, also lamented the decay of the equipment in the power sector. According to Lukman, “The grid is very weak, many of the equipment currently in use are causing power cuts across the country because they are old, they have not been maintained properly and they are aging. The communication, control and signalling systems within the grid are all very old and very unreliable.”

 

Corroborating Lukman's story is Ajaero, who told Newsworld that 70 per cent of all the transformers across the country are very weak, overloaded and not functional. He added that the weak state of power equipment in Nigeria is making it very difficult for PHCN to make power available in many homes. According to him, PHCN has a store capacity of 6000 megawatts presently but can only evacuate a meagre 1800 megawatts to homes daily because of the poor state of power equipment.

 

Government had toyed with the idea of privatising the sector. During the second term of Olusegun Obasanjo's presidency, PHCN was unbundled to facilitate its privatisation but it still looks unattractive to investors. Ajaero would, however not advocate outright privatisation. He called for deregulation where private sector participation would go hand in hand with the efforts of the public sector. According to him, “this is to avoid transferring public monopoly to private monopoly. Evidence has shown that the private sector people have not fared better. They got licenses to build private power plants but did not do anything all these years, how then can the government entrust into their hands power they are incapable of generating.”

 

Lukman in his report warned the government against any further privatisation of the power sector. “We feel that it is highly important that the co-ordinating body in the PHCN be put in place. The privatisation of the successor companies should be suspended until the completion of these repairs and viability status is sustained.”

 

Rilwanu committee's said about N10.2 trillion is needed to achieve about 20,000 megawatts by 2020. This, of course is still far from what 140 million Nigerians need for optimum power supply. The prospects of reaching the 'Promised Land' can be said not to be in view. What this means is that the much desired economic rejuvenation is still sky-high after about $13 billion was said to have been spent to generate about 2000 megawatts in eight years.

 

Successive Nigerian presidents have often underestimated the problem of the energy sector. Former President Obasanjo had promised to solve the problem within the first six months in office. By the time he handed over to President Yar'Adua, the problem had become worse. When he was running for the exalted office in 2007, Yar'Adua promised to declare a state of emergency in the power sector immediately on assumption of office. It has taken him more than one year to do so.