Kayode Komolafe
12 September 2007
column
Lagos — To be charitable to the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, while the energy crisis has survived it the groundwork for the broad power sector reforms was laid by that government. In fact, some would say that if in the next few years the economy is powered by steady electricity supply, Nigerians should not forget to give part of the credit to Obasanjo.
Well, that is still a matter for the future.
The sore reality is that crisis persists in the sector. The chronic nature of the crisis justified the pledge by President Umaru Yar'Adua at the take-off of his administration that the situation in the sector deserved a declaration of emergency. And to be fair to Yar'Adua, a lot of activities of the government are focussed on addressing the problem. It has been explained that the perceived tardiness in the Yar'Adua approach is due to the fact that he wants to be holistic and systematic in the solutions to be proffered. He has taken his time to apprise himself with the depth of the problem while the consumers of electricity are yearning for steady power supply. The approach seems to take energy as whole, be it electricity or fuel.
He is surely towing the path of liberalisation in the sector. And that is precisely why, from the good experience of the telecom sector, the regulatory mechanism should be strengthened and appropriately oriented. For, liberalisation without an efficient and a focussed regulator is a recipe for socio-economic fiasco. That is not a sector why you allow a free reign of liberalisation barons. If the government permits that it would create more social crisis than it proclaimed to solve. Such cannot be afforded in such a pivotal and sensitive sector as energy.
This is why the role of the budding Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) becomes central to any discussion of the problem and fashioning of solution. The NERC under the leadership of Dr. Ransome Owen has, so far, granted interim licenses to the 18 PHCN successor companies and has licenced 18 Independent Power Producers (IPPs) for a total generation of power amounting to 6,864MW. Licenses have also been granted to the First Independent Power Company Limited in respect of Trans-Amadi, Omoku and Eleme power stations with a total installed generation capacity of 381 MW. The commission has also crafted rules for the operators in the sector in pursuit of its goal of 'keeping the lights on".
Significantly, among the codes that NERC is fashioning for the operators are those aimed at consumer protection? However, the perspective on consumer protection should be widened to accommodate affordability of electricity price especially by the poor in the society. The power sector should avoid that sort of impasse experienced by the expected investors in the private refineries who are said to be wary of investment without being sure of selling fuel at market-determined prices. It is not too early to design a framework of subsidy to bridge whatever gaps may arise in pricing before that the IPPs begin full operations.
Secondly, it is also important to be futuristic in the targets to be set for the sector. With all the much -talked about huge investments in the sector, it should not be long before the targets of 10, 000 MW should be surpassed. The point is that as emergency is declared in the sector there should be a conscious strategy aimed at resolving the emergent issues in the sector.
As ANPP Leaves Buhari in the Cold...
For a man who used to nurse suspicion about the devious nature of politicians, Buhari would be feeling justified in retrospect now for the view he held before he embraced politics full swing. The man is too straightforward for the kind of crooked politics played in Nigeria.
The Indian sage, Mahatma Ghandi identified "politics without principle" as one of the seven social sins that a man should abhor. Buhari seems to imbibe this injunction unyieldingly; but it does not have application in the larger context of Nigerian politics.
How else can one explain the formal withdrawal of the petition filed by the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) before the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja? The party sponsored Buhari for the April presidential election. It subsequently joined the candidate in the legal dispute of the results of the election in which the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) declared President Umaru Yar'Adua the winner.
The spur for this monumental betrayal of the ANPP's flag bearer is that the party has 'entered into a lawful understanding/agreement to cooperate with the government, accepting the call of Alhaji Umaru Yar'Adua to join the Government of National Unity."
The upshot is that Buhari 's resolve to distance himself from this opportunistic design called "Government of National Unity" has earned him isolation from his party. Buhari has to pay the price of being principled.
What we are witnessing is nothing but a systematic dissolution of other parties into the PDP. The 1999 Constitution already envisages a unity government when it makes it mandatory for a President to appoint at least a minister from each state of the federation. Pray, what unity is an opposition party craving for beyond this? The crave of ANPP is actually for a National Government of Opportunism.
Meanwhile, the ANPP should be reminded as it embarks on this adventure that unity is not achieved by PDP swallowing other parties at the price of ministerial slots. The unity of unprincipled and ideologically un-delineated parties is not synonmous with national unity. It is not by appointing ministers from parties, which should otherwise provide the necessary counter-poise to the party in power, that the purpose of national unity is served. The posture of ANPP scramblers for ministerial slots is detrimental to the health of multiparty democracy, which Nigeria strives to build.
By the way, ANPP's National Chairman, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, ought to learn from history that lack of principle is a political malaise. The gentleman was a key player in a similar "understanding/agreement" between his Second Republic platform, the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) and the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) that was in power. The game then was coded NPN-NPP Accord. As part of the dividends from the infamous accord, Ume-Ezeoke became the Speaker of the House of Representatives even though it was NPN, and not his own party, NPP, that controlled the majority of the House members. Like all other opportunistic fabrications, the accord soon became ill fated. The NPP ordered its members, who got appointment into the government of President Shehu Shagari out. Ume-Ezeoke stayed on. So it is not today that the Ume-Ezeokes of this world began to commit the social sin of 'politics without principles".
We can only contemplate on this experiment by ANPP, which has chosen the path of opportunism instead of providing a robust and constructive opposition to enliven liberal democracy in Nigeria. For those who believe that history repeats itself, the story of ANPP's grand opportunism is a handy sample. However, as Karl Marx put in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonapatre: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
Maybe these would suffice as words of consolation for Buhari, as his party seems to have left him in the cold.
He should fight on.
Lagos PDP's Self-Flagellation
It was the eminent historian, Professor Emmanuel Ayandele as Vice Chancellor of the University of Calabar, who once described the old Cross River State as an "atomistic society perpetually at war with itself". Ayandele was criticising the squabbling in the state (comprised then of the present Cross River and Akwa Ibom State) and accused a section of the state of habouring animosity for the Oron community, a development he called Oronphobia. He, of course, received knocks from those who disagreed with his high-sounding characterisation.
There is, perhaps, no more appropriate way to describe the state of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State than to say that not only is the party so atomised, it is "perpetually at war with itself". Not a few political analysts have suggested that the serial defeats that the party has suffered in the last three governorship elections have been due to the bitterly fractious nature of the party, among other factors.
For instance, the party went into the April elections with full the full baggage of the unrestrained acrimony generated by the primaries, which saw Mrs Hilda Williams and Senator Musiliu Obanikoro as top contenders. The National Deputy Chairman of PDP, Chief Bode George, preferred the widow of the late Engineer Funso Williams (who was famously gearing to be the party's candidate before his yet-to-be resolved murder) because "in a competition between a man and a woman for a seat, it is expected that the man should concede to the woman". However, as it turned out to be, Obanikoro got the ticket and went into the election and eventually lost to Governor Babatunde Fashola of the Action Congress (AC).
It has been the culture of PDP to, sometimes, compensate their losing governorship candidates with ministerial slots. So when the Senate turned down the nomination of the technocrat, Mr. Bode Augusto, on the allegation of being "arrogant", the party submitted three names from Lagos from which the President could nominate a minister for the National Assembly to approve. These are Obanikoro, Chief Tokunbo Kamson and Mr. Bode Oyedele.
There were speculations at the weekend that on learning that Obanikoro was the favourite on the list, George moved deftly to stop him from becoming a minister. To achieve this, he allegedly worked through the Chairman of Board of Trustees of PDP, former President Obasanjo to get President Umaru Yar'Adua drop Obanikoro's name. His name has been reportedly replaced with that of another PDP man, Mr. Demola Seriki.
George has evidently not forgiven Obanikoro for whatever alleged offence he committed in the course of politicking for the primaries. No doubt, the wounds inflicted during the primaries are still fresh. George is by no means a student of the late Waziri Ibrahim's school of "politics without bitterness". He nurses what can be described as, borrowing Ayandele's phrase, Obanikorophobia. The retired naval officer-turned- politician has proved again that while he might not muster the political capacity to win Lagos for PDP, he certainly has sufficient clout within the party apparatchik to put paid to Obanikoro's ambition for now. The aftermath of this power game is surely in the belly of the future.
So, where does this leave the party that seems jinxed as far as Lagos politics is concerned? A commentator said the other day that as long as the Georges of this world hold sway in Lagos PDP, factionalisation would be endemic in the party and it may, therefore, never win elections in the state. The party is whipping itself mercilessly. And that should naturally be good music in the ears of its competitors. Future political historians will find it exciting examining the Bode George factor to see whether to classify it as positive or negative in Lagos PDP.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
