allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Return of Development Politics (Page 1 of 1)

"After a long deliberation, the states supported the proposal that funds from our excess crude will go towards this project (power supply) as part of our national efforts to address this problem that we see as key to the development of our great country" - Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State

Devil (just like the seemingly intractable national darkness and power meltdown) is in some details. But so of course Godliness, (which is the desired uninterrupted national power supply and national lightening), is also in bagful of (megawatt) details. The details of the weekend $5.3 billion power supply finance deal between the Federal government and the 36 states of the Federation are still sketchy.

Whatever the details turn out to be (assuming there will be freedom to information!), what is crystal clear is that with this stroke of unprecedented cooperative deal between the tripartite federal, state and local governments, we are commendably reinventing development politics of the greater years of 60s and 70s rudely terminated by decades of anti-developmentalist military dictatorship and eight years of para-military regime of OBJ.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, for all you care to remember, also engaged the state governors and local government councils, but it was largely the engagement of an imperial overlord over his vassals, and many an instance, an engagement of some rogue leader with his victims than sincere development constructive partner the constitution envisages.

Between 1999 and 2008, at the best of times, the states were engaged in wars of attrition (witness Lagos' criminally-withheld local government funds), Bayelsa and Ekiti (impeached governors) and Anambra and Plateau (with periodic politically-motivated mayhems). States not so destructively engaged were transfigured into some federal parastatals and agencies hosting serial weddings of Monsieur President's sons and daughters' weddings (Rivers and Ogun states), competing to occupy the frontline chairs at Owu day (Ogun and many others) or shamelessly financing illegalities like Presidential Library (virtually all states) third term agenda (Jigawa and Delta among others).

At the worst of times, the states were randomly patronised through unsolicited wasteful visits of a Federal Garrison commander commissioning "projects" which the Federal government did not finance nor initiate. All states were routinely talked at through ad hoc unplanned stakeholders' forums on such clumsy open-ended subjects ranging from cassava, malaria, Avian flu, census, Niger Delta to banking sector reform with disastrous marching orders packaged as stakeholders' resolutions by the Villa courtiers.

For instance, the take-off crisis which characterised 2006 census was attributed to the fact that the governors and other relevant stakeholders who should be working for proper headcount at state and local levels were receiving presidential lecture at an Abuja town hall. The result was a decade long governance crisis that leaves in its trail power outages of national embarrassment, high profile corruption, jobless growth, worsening poverty and massive job-losses.

It is certainly significant that through knowledge, some planning and painstaking consultations, President Yar'adua has cultivated the needed cooperation of the state governments for great battle for urgent re-electrification of the country. This raises the nostalgia of the immediate post colonial Nigeria in which development politics by development politicians cooperated to combat the scourge of underdevelopment left behind by colonialism.

The point cannot be overstated that the large-scale power plants development started in the 60s of democratic Nigeria. Kainji power stations, Afam, Delta, Ijora, Egbin and Shiroro stations were conceived, built and expanded during this development decade. What Yar'adua shows is that that once there is development will, there will be some ways to cope with the challenges of development without alienating all the stakeholders.

The debate on the constitutionality of the financing deal is here nor there. The debate is clearly unhelpful. The issue is not what sections 80 and 81 of the constitution say with respect to revenue allocation. We all know that the constitution says all monies should go to the consolidated fund to be shared and never provides for an excess crude account. The constitution should not be learnt by route but by well-thought reasoning.

Our preoccupation should be what the constitution does not say. The constitution does not say all should be spent or that some cannot be saved either or that that there cannot be joint-financing. On the contrary, given that the constitution rests on the premises that governance is about the welfare and security of Nigerians, a financing deal between the Federal and the state not to finance another presidential library but to build power plants is in line with the sprit and content of the constitution.

By this deal, the Yar'adua administration has dealt a constructive blow at the notorious concept of excess crude without much grandstanding and wasteful litigations. By soliciting the states equity investment to raise $5 billion for the take off of the power emergency, Yar'adua's government is saying that contrary to make belief of surplus fund to be routinely shared, given the financing gap in the country, there is nothing like excess crude when we are unable to fix power, water and education among others. By the time we apply same cooperative approach to education, Niger Delta, road and rail development, as we must urgently do it will be self evident that excess crude is more nominal than real.

Indeed, with respect to power alone to move from 10,000MW to 30,000MW as much as $30 billion dollars are required which makes the raised $5 billion a token. The entire Federal government share of national budgets in foreseeable future is one "single bracelet" that cannot "jingle" power megawatts. As a matter of fact the Federal/ state partnership can only help but cannot salvage the power sector. We need multiple "bracelets" as it were.

There is the need for public/private partnership not through a doctrinaire privatisation plan (of what is not there) but through same engagement that will induce private equity investment to lift Nigeria from the sickening age of darkness and non-production to electricity and wealth generation. Lastly, an all-inclusive development process will engender automatic accountability. It is now an open knowledge that we know the exact figure of $5.3 billion for power emergency compared to the guess figures of OBJ's top-down releases to bottomless/powerless pits/poles.

The states who are also investors in this worthy venture will certainly not be on-lookers to see scarce resources going down the pits. We may not need future public hearings/hirelings of the House when we can routinely demand for accountability of the all-inclusive steering/implementation of the committee of the new project.

The beauty of the new deal is that we are inadvertently replacing corruption agenda and thievery discourse with development agenda and development discourse. Listening to Governors Saraki and Amaechi, it is refreshing to hear equity investment for the power sector to put an end to perennial power outages.

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