Vanguard (Lagos)
Yemo Afoye
4 November 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
It is for this reason I will give credit to the immediate past administration whether people like it or not and also to this present regime that has the vision of trying to see how power can be improved, at least making it one of its seven cardinal agenda. Take this place for instance, 24 hours I'm on generator but if power can be stabilised to even 12 hours a day, it's ok for an industrialised sector. So a lot of things have gone in Nigeria due to prolonged military interference in governance
What in particular did the past administration do to arouse your commendation?
Take for instance in Nigeria we take an overdraft facility from the bank because of connection or whatsoever, to go and import tooth-pick, plantain chips, Eva water etc. into Nigeria. Five Alive was imported from South Africa. The Obasanjo administration looked at the whole sector and said no! this is not possible. He placed a ban on all those items and now when you look at Five Alive, it is made in the brand of coca cola which is made in Nigeria. Chivita was almost collapsing but Chivita now is booming, a lot of beverages are coming up from small scale industries.
This is part of the policy.What is the duty on an imported transformer? Five per cent, but I can tell you if the duty goes to 45 per cent, 40 per cent or even 20 per cent, you will see people looking within and not outside Nigeria to get transformer but because the duty on transformers is so low , any person that has the fund can just go and import transformer and tell you that the transformer is as good as what- ever you have so Obasanjo's regime brought us to this level that we are going to be for us to meet goals of Vision 2020 iof the government.
Nigeria is complaining that there is no power, and forgetting that there is nowhere in the world where you'll need a transformer and then decide that you are going to a shop like Kingsway to buy a transformer, you can't get it abroad, you will put down your money either 50 per cent or 30 per cent and after a month, you'll come and pick your transformer, in some cases after three months. Sometimes a single power transformer takes about six months to manufacture.
If PHCN has been using this particular transformer since 1965 and has not taken time out to consider the maintenance factor on the equipment, definitely it will break down, and Obasanjo's regime looked into all those areas, but we are the way we are for obvious reasons.
How has it been so far, in a sector so controversial, do tell us about the challenges you've been facing?
It has been an adventurous journey in the sense that it is pain most of the time, your family members will also feel the pain because all your funds which a normal Nigerian will use for social activities would be thrown into an investment over a period of time and it takes time as well - why people are not into transformer business is because it is capital-intensive.
Two units of code winding machines are close to $US45,000, low coring machine is about US$14,000, a hyper- tronic tester is about US$12,000, a digital oil tester is close to about US$7,000, so you now realise that it is not a child's play because it's just like a doctor who wants to open a specialist hospital, he must have every equipment in place. If I'm telling you that I am into manufacturing of transformer and I don't have all the necessary standard equipment in place, then I am just deceiving myself.
Are you saying that you are now equipped well enough to produce a power transformer from scratch?
Those two coils over there were manufactured from the scratch without moving anywhere. In essence, we sourced all our raw materials within the country, but these raw materials were not manufactured in Nigeria.
They were also imported into the country, although we were able to harness all the raw materials from whatever suppliers to put them into what they are now, and as we are sitting here now, we will still be doing almost like 70 per cent or 80 per cent of importation of raw materials. But then, what we are doing here is not even importing transformers or this accessories as CKD, No! We buy most of our accessories from Switzerland, we buy insulation materials from England, but for now the major players in the industry are Indians because the equipment are from India.
Nigeria as a country cannot produce transformer oil and the transformer oil which is a mineral oil is a by-product of gasoline. Still, we can't produce insulating transformer oil and we are saying the oil sector is booming and making bold to refer to ourselves as a major global oil producer.
Oil is a revenue, the amount of oil that comes into Nigeria yearly is sad, may have reduced it to nine, and I'm not paying duties, time factor forgotten because as soon as the suppliers or importers of this oil realise that Mr. A doesn't have oil, he jacks up his price and you don't have any choice other than to buy.
Take for instance if PHCN gives us transformers to repair, we repair them and PHCN doesn't even have transformer oil, so it goes back to the sector and we now charge PHCN for the things that Nigeria is supposed to produce.
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