The 6000mw - electricity - by - December balloon finally blew up in our face as a nation on Tuesday last week. The Chief Economic Adviser to President Yar'adua Dr. Tanimu Kurfi still holding to the tether said unemotionally at the Economic Summit Group that the target set by government on its own, could not be met in two weeks time, due to obvious reasons.

The required gas was not available to flare the turbines. The destabilizing action of the militant in the Niger Delta had contributed to there being no gas. The overwhelming problems of transmission and distribution had regrettably not been attended to adequately and therefore could not handle the handsome 5200mw currently said to be the generation. What a mess! By 800mw only? We are by all means an 'A' class having scored 80% - only a meaningless 'A' category performance because our country is still under the grip of debilitating darkness and lack of power for critical growth needs. A miss by a centimetre is as good (or bad) as a miss by a kilometre.

Did Nigerian believe the set target was achievable? I do not think so. Yet with sheepish gullibility, we gave faith to a lie and joined in the chasing of the promise that was empty. Like we do at the many failed Super Eagles Matches, we would click and put a finger between out teeth and scream our regret. "Chei", or better still, "Allah wadai". What a miss! What a wasted great expectation. Never the less, Nigerians have a penchant for believing and waiting patiently, and trusting all over again when call upon to do so even by those who let us down again and again.

Now it feels really stupid to have kept faith with the false hope.

Why did we fail to meet out targeted 6000mw and all that attending the target implied? Mainly because no one was in charge who was in charge? The marshal effort to take Nigeria out of darkness was under no one in particular, yet you could not blame Yar'adua because it now seems, his task ended when he pronounced the target. Neither the Power Minister nor the Chief Economic Adviser seemed to be the one with his hand on the handle. In conscientious democracies, someone should take responsibility and drop his portfolio in the government. Alas in our democracy, we are treated to the kind of discordant rationalization of failure as we are getting now through public functionaries asking to be applauded for having tried!

It is not enough to bask in pyrrhic sanctimonies of some measure of victory like Shamsuddeen Usman, the National Planning minister said, 'give us some applause, at least we tried'. This is more serious than "one flew over the cuckoo's nest". The crisis in the Nigeria power sector is the basis for all the socio-economic woes of the country, with reports of industry relocated to Ghana! We have known the critical factors to this target for long, as the matter of fact they where factored in for the setting of this target. Gas was the number one needed consideration, to jumpstart generation we also knew it has to come, if it would, from volatile Niger Delta. So? It was critical to address transmission and distribution both of them also considered when the promise to deliver 6000mw by December was made. Nigerians find it irksome that this problems identified from the word go, are now the hindrances to the attainment of 6000mw.

At the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund, lies General Buhari's unpatented plan to intervene in the power sector such that would guarantee adequate and sustainable power supply.

I humbly and with all due deference to more informed inputs, suggest that indeed, President Yar'adua should declare a marshal plan to attain the 6000mw in 6 months - June ending 30th 2010. The energy crisis is causing Nigeria war tine proportion damages. It should be address with a war approach. A task force should be placed in charge, headed by a technically orientated tested go-getter, a retired Military Officer with corporation experience would do, who will coordinate all involved institutions at the tell donation "mission accomplished". Government should build gas tank farms in respective gas generation plant locations and ensure storage and six month stock. This is a strategic logistic a soldier going to war and needing gas would establish. Could it be imagined that a field commander that returns to the Defence Headquarters to report that the "war" was lost because gas could not be acquired? The task force would also proactively place transmission and distribution on line in time for the attainment in 6 months.

President Yar'adua would do well to place the IPP legislative probe report before the EFCC in order to enforced execution of all prepaid contracts, and where possible, recover all shadow payments.

As it is, many States are seeking to install independent generation capacities. They are hamstrung by official red tape from system protectionists hell-bent on not liberalizing the policy on infrastructure for transmission and distribution to protect their lucrative holdings. It is obvious that these strongholds must be dismantled for states to help themselves making inputs to the national grid. The idea of the old ECN is gaining popularity.

For now, Nigerians may applaud Yar'adua for a genuine try-"at least he tried". But try is not useful until delivery is made on the promise to improve power supply in Nigeria.