The graveyard of presidential promises

President Muhammadu Buhari admitted at a meeting with the Oba of Benin, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Ewuare II, and the members of the Edo State Council of Traditional rulers and chiefs in Abuja this past week that the performance of his administration in the power sector was “not good enough.” Femi Adesina, his senior special assistant on media and publicity, quoted the big man as having told his visitors: “We are doing our best, but, obviously, our best is not good enough yet.”

The Oba, ignoring the traditional diplomatic niceties for a good reason, had described the power situation as “pathetic.” Buhari’s confession, if that, was an understatement. Nevertheless, it was an honest admission that this president too would likely leave office at the end of his tenure with improved fortunes for generator merchants and local candle manufacturers and erratic power supply for the populace. It is a disturbing thought on our country’s future condemned in its entirety to darkness rather than light. We should summon the prayer warriors to his aid.

As a presidential candidate in 2015, Buhari was critical of the PDP government performance in the power sector. He said: “When PDP came to power in 1999 Nigeria was generating about 4,000 megawatts of electricity. After 15 years and $20 billion spent we are generating between 3,000 and 4,000 megawatts.”

PDP disputed this and claimed that when it came to power in 1999, this giant of Africa with lovely feet of clay, generated 1,600 megawatts and that as at the time Buhari lobbed his criticism at it, it had taken the power generation to 4,568 megawatts.

Africa Check waded in to establish the truth on the claims by both sides. A report for the online publication by Eleanor Whitehead, in 2014, says that “figures indicate that generation has increased broadly in line with the figures given by the PDP… Between 1999 and 20013, generation has moved from roughly 1,700 megawatts to 4,000 megawatts.”

The mathematics of providing steady power supply to a developing African country with an estimated 198 million or 201 million is still beyond the ken of the best brains in the business. Casting for a solution has turned the power sector into the graveyard of presidential promises. President Obasanjo promised to end the erratic power supply within six months of his receiving the baton from General Abdulsalami Abubakar in 1999. He did not end it in eight years. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua promised to lift power generation from some 3,800 megawatts to 9,000 megawatts by November 2009. It did not happen. President Goodluck Jonathan promised to make the difference in the previous presidential promises on the power sector. He promised that by 2012, all the generator owners in the country would be out there hawking the generators they no longer needed because power generation would peak at a steady 15,000 megawatts. He did not deliver.

I take it that if candidate Buhari laid the cane across the back of the PDP administration over the power sector, the light would shine on the nation under his watch. But four years later under him, the light still flickers. The power situation has remained stubbornly pathetic. It must be one of the biggest ironies that the search for truth here always ends in darkness.

Information about our power sector is opaque. We have never been told how much the country has spent on power generation and distribution. But we know, thanks to the oba, that whatever claims anyone might be tempted to make, the situation is, and remains, pathetic. We just know that the promise made by every Nigerian president since 1999 to rescue the country from the clutches of darkness has seen the mindless influx of imported generators into the country. We just know that every government office, every private company and almost every home in our towns and cities, has at least two generators. These are not indicators of improvement in the power sector. Governments, companies and individuals spend a fortune just to have power to run their businesses. Or, simply see where they are going. Are we jinxed? It must be the curse of the generator merchants.

The power situation is not just pathetic because only about 48 per cent of the population is regularly entertained by woefully irregular power supply; it is pathetic because of these reasons:

One, the national peak demand is 19,100 megawatts but the average daily delivery is a miserable 4,027.8 megawatts.

Two, we have at least 27 fossil fuel power stations and five hydro-electric power stations in the country with a total installed capacity of 11,165.40 megawatts. The peak power generation attained this far is 5,222.3 megawatts. The difference between demand and supply is thus huge. This is what the generator manufacturers and merchants have taken full advantage of.

Three, we have had a slew of task forces and legislation to make the light shine on our country. A presidential task force on power walked that path. The unbundling of NEPA and a privatisation scheme that birthed, Nigeria’s Integrated Power Project all of which are over seen by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Agency, still find us at the starting block. None of those had dramatically removed the shame and the embarrassment of our country’s inability to get its power sector mathematics right in spite of our brilliant professors of mathematics.

Four, in 2007, we learnt that the Obasanjo administration spent $20 billion on the power sector. Africa Check recalls that the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, “stated that the bulk of that money – $16 billion – was frittered away in bogus contracts during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo between 199 and 2007. The next year, the house initiated a probe which corroborated those claims.” You may recall the stinking scandal that attended that probe in full public view. Nothing happened and no one was held responsible, because, you got it, this is Nigeria.

Five, no one, not even Buhari, has deemed it fit to tell the people how much his administration and others before it have spent so far to make generators and their health-destroying fumes history. Perhaps, what you do not know cannot make you miserable.

Six, Nigeria, a leading oil-producing country, is unable to provide regular natural gas supply for its thermal power stations. And so, according to the World Bank, “new power projects commissioned between 2012 and 2014 are not running at full speed due to gas constraint.”

The curse of the generator manufacturers and merchants? Got it.

In his 2019 budget speech to the national assembly, Buhari said: “In power, we are working on over 90 transmission projects across the country.” Some of these, according to him, had been completed. Yet, the bottom line is that the situation gets more and more pathetic, threatening to make every president in our country a victim of a promise not kept.