17 July 2008
editorial
Abuja — Any hope that the Power Sector probe will see the light of the day soon may be totally misplaced because even though the committee wound up sitting more than two months ago its report has still not been presented to the House.
The report is ready but it is being delayed by internal squabbling within the committee. According to an account, soon after the committee completed its assignment, the chairman Godwin Ndudi Elumelu relocated abroad and single-handedly wrote the report. On completion he promptly summoned other members for a meeting in Abuja and tried to read the report to them.
The committee members protested arguing, that their inputs were not reflected in the report and in anger the members walked out in protest. Up till now, we are not privy to any settlement between the Mr. Elumelu and his enraged colleagues, which means that the report is far from seeing the light of the day.
It is disappointing that the Power Sector probe on which so much store has been placed to unravel the conflicting claims of how much, in fact had been expended in the sector and how much work has been done on all the contracts awarded toward improving power supply, is now at the risk of turning into a mere circus show with its members lounging at one another's throat and not being able to come to agreement. It bears repeating the reasons that informed the probe. First, to throw light on how much was spent on the sector; is it the 10 billion dollars as claimed by President Umaru Yar'adua or the 16 billion dollars on which the House Speaker Dimeji Bankole is insisting? Secondly, while in session the committee itself unearthed revelations which showed that the power sector was a bottomless pit of official financial misdemenours, specifically the nation was told how bogus contracts worth N21billion were awarded for the rehabilitation and refurbishing of thermal as well as electricity transmission facilities of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) from 1999 to 2007.
Nigerians were also told how the Obasanjo administration paid N6 billion to 34 unregistered companies to execute various projects under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) and how he waived due process for all NIPP contracts, as well as how a firm vanished for two years after pocketing N4.5 billion for the construction of the New Haven, Ikot Ekpene 330KVA switching sub-station. The firm, Payma Bargh and Carpalark Engineering Services, was to have completed the project by December, 2007 but the contractors disappeared after collecting the said sum of money, only to resurface when the probe began. The committee, after the public hearing, undertook an inspection of the project sites and what members saw was, according to the members was equally shocking.
From the outset, a large section of the public were skeptical about whether the probe was capable of delivering on the assignment, noting that like others before it, its outcome would simply gather dust. In their opinion, the probe is a needless exercise that will come to nought as nothing substantial will come out of it. They hinged their cynicism on past probes whose reports are yet to be released, discarded in some waste bin. Many others have dismissed it outright as a waste of tax payers' money and that the resources that will be expended on both the public hearing and the sites inspections, they argued, should have been put into better use.
We do not share these sentiments. The probe was necessary and also in line with the discharge of an important function of legislative over-sight. Also, given the centrality of power to the economy and well being of the state, improving the power supply is imperative. Therefore only a comprehensive probe as was conducted can find out what went wrong in the past and how to correct them, but the committee is unwittingly handing a loaded gun to its critics in order to shoot down all its efforts. The delay in submitting its findings to the plenary is capable of eroding the report's credibility and the more it is delayed, the more public confidence in it will wane. We say, therefore, come out with the report.
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