President Goodluck Jonathan last week unveiled a comprehensive electricity reform plan, encompassing short- and long-term measures to resuscitate the crippled sector.

Under the roadmap, the government will gradually deregulate the power sector and attract private sector investment of $3.5 billion annually in a bid to move power generation from the current 3,500 megawatts to 40,000mw by the year 2020. In the interim, government hopes to attain the 7,000mw by April 2011, given recent moves to make the price of gas attractive to enable oil companies invest in gas processing and transmission projects. Government shall also invest $3.5 billion in the construction of transmission lines that could evacuate 14,000mw of electricity to the national grid when independent power plants currently under construction come on stream by 2013.

This roadmap would commence with the privatisation of generation and distribution arms of the electricity supply chain. The transmission arm would still be in government hands but its management might have to be contracted out to private firms. Jonathan hopes that Nigeria might attain regular power supply by the end of 2013. The plan is bold and realistic, but its implementation would be daunting and requires the making of very hard decisions. The Jonathan administration has a penchant for cowering under pressure. This time it must be firm and unwavering. The first obstacle on the road would be electricity workers' unions that consider the plan as a threat to their jobs.

They plan to resist the reforms. But their moves to sabotage the reforms could be truncated if the government negotiates transparently and guarantees the prompt payment of the severance packages of those to be affected by the inevitable job losses that the reform would engender. The workers have already expressed fears that Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) would go the way of NITEL and Daily Times of Nigeria Plc (DTN) if privatised. The staff of NITEL are now owed two years salaries. DTN was sold to the wrong investor, who stripped its assets and shut down the company. It took the government about a decade to pay the severance packages of former staff of the defunct Nigeria Airways.

To allay the fears of the electricity workers' unions, government should ensure that the generation and distribution arms of PHCN are sold at market prices to fit and proper investors who would add value to them. Developments in the telecoms and aviation sectors are convincing evidence that deregulation remains the only solution to decades of debilitating darkness that PHCN and its predecessors plunged Nigeria into. Government must pursue this roadmap with transparency and firmness. However, PHCN workers must not suffer the horrendous financial asphyxiation that their colleagues in Nigeria Airways and NITEL were subjected to.