Leadership (Abuja)
Golu Timothy
20 February 2008
Abuja — President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua took a step further yesterday to end the country's long-running energy crisis within the shortest possible time, when he established a presidential committee for the accelerated expansion of Nigeria's power infrastructure.
The president charged the committee with the huge responsibility of delivering within 18 months the 6,000 additional megawatts generation, transmission and distribution capacity targeted under the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP).
A press statement signed by special adviser to the president (communications), Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, said: "The committee will be driven by private sector leadership and its establishment is based on the conclusion by President Yar'Adua that the government must forge an effective partnership with the private sector to solve Nigeria's power supply problem".
Members of the committee include the chief executive officer of the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a private sector-led development finance institution, Mr. Austine Ometoruwa, who is expected to play a central role in the new initiative with his significant investment and technical capacity.
Others are chairman of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote; group managing director of the Wempco Group, Mr. Lewis Tung; Mr. Cyril Odu, executive director of Sahara Energy; Mr. Atedo Peterside, chairman of IBTC Bank, and Engineer Abubakar Lawal Yar'Adua, group managing director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
The minister of state, energy (power), Mrs. Fatima Balaraba Ibrahim, is the chairperson of the committee, while Dr. Rowlan Owan, chief executive officer of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, will serve as its secretary. Other members are chief economic adviser to the president, Dr. Tanimu Yakubu, and special adviser to the president on power, Engineer Joseph Makoju.
In undertaking its assignment, the committee is expected to conduct an independent technical, financial and legal audit of infrastructure in Nigeria's power sector; source funding for the completion of the ongoing NIPP project based on terms and conditions mutually-acceptable to the Federal Government and investors; provide inputs for the design of an appropriate securitization structure to attract credible investors to the power sector; and provide inputs for a power purchase agreement template that will ensure a reasonable level of return on investment for investors and affordable tariffs for consumers.
The committee is expected to submit an interim report to President Yar'Adua within 30 days. Its inputs are expected to be a vital component of the state of emergency to be declared by the president in the power sector.
In a related development, the vice-president, Dr. Jonathan Goodluck, has said that the frequent power cut in Nigeria had become "embarrassing".
Jonathan was speaking after the lights went out at a meeting he was attending in Abuja, the BBC reported last night.
During last year's election, President Yar'Adua said he would declare a "state of emergency" in the power sector but energy experts said little has changed.
The BBC said that a senior government official gave it shocking details of why much vaunted improvements have had little effect.
"It is a problem we have and we must solve. We are determined to solve it. It is not about Abuja, but the whole country and we must get out of this embarrassing situation," he said.
"We produce 3,000 megawatts of electricity, need at least 8,000 megawatts; 10 existing power stations running at very low capacity. The government has spent $16 billion dollars on building new power stations and trying to fix transmission grids in the last nine years."
But six power stations - already paid for by the government - are yet to be completed years after they were begun, a member of the committee set up to reform the power industry told the BBC.
Eighteen turbines worth $3 billion are sitting untouched in a Lagos port because the government has no way of moving them to the site of the power stations, he said.
"It's been an embarrassment for nearly a decade. Some of the construction work on the stations is so delayed that after six years they have not even finished building the foundations," said the committee member, who did not want to be identified.
"Only the president knows what the next move is," he added.
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