WHEN Chinedu Nebo, then a ministerial nominee spoke of casting out witches and demons during Senate screening, he must have thought that he was deploying an innocuous metaphor which any reasonable person would ordinarily decipher.
He was mistaken. He unfortunately did not reckon with the notorious nature of human mischief.
Since then, the venerable gentleman has been spurned and lampooned not by a few vintage Nigerian public commentators mostlyposturing to belong to an exclusive club of knowledgeable power experts from which the distinguished Professor is an alien. Whereas the frustration and anger of Nigerians concerning the abysmal power situation in the country is understandable, yet it begs reason to engage in scapegoating simply to score cheap points or put a fall guy in the hangman's noose.
Take, for instance, the recent Nebo bashing by IjeomaNwogwugwu, in July 1, 2013 ThisDay. In a piece entitled "Of Nebo and His Demons", Ijeoma dealtwhat can be considered the most virulent unkind cut thus far. For Ijeoma, "the problem with Nebo is that he hasn't got the foggiest clue of how to manage the power sector".One of the specifics for the sweeping use of hyperbole was that a certain foreign-based analyst opinedthat Nebo having come from an institution with less than $15m in annual budget "is a cold feet in corporate boardrooms, and may not articulate financial, legal and maximally productive arguments/scenarios to entice and appease, while appealing to investors to take Nigeria's power sector seriously."
According to our wise foreign-based analyst, the Wisdom of Solomon has become a function of how much cash you are in control of or managing.Perhaps that must explain why the heavily rich Republicans still hold poor Barack Obama in enduring disdain, insisting that he is messing the US economy big time. Of course, David Cameron can now understand why despite his efforts, Britain is reported at this instant to be in the danger of having power blackouts and power rationings once every four years, down from a record of once every 47 years. You know these men didn't have prior experience of handling big corporations before becoming managers of world leading economies. Of course it wouldn't matter if a man like Warren Buffet, arguably the world's richest man was quoted as saying: "In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first one, the other two will kill you." In a world where integrity is in short supply, it wouldn't matter too that Nebo is reputedly in excess supply of that scarce commodity.
It does seem that as long as Nebo remains Power Minister, he must be 'foggy clueless'. And please discountenance the fact that he was Professor of metallurgy and materials engineering before becoming a Vice Chancellor; it must be that his intelligence quotient and energy levels have diminished overtime. Otherwise, how can the man not understand that "the transmission grid has not been upgraded in lockstep with electricity output" andworse still has failed to do something about that.
Come to think about it, the system operator Manitoba Hydro is also not able to do anything about the continuing system collapse under their watchbecause their hands are tied. Some people are stopping them from using copters to monitor the sub stations and transmission lines to keep them at the best optimum performance. You know the people, don't you? The Power Ministry officials, theTCN Board, the Vice President, Bureau of Public Procurement and the Attorney General who don't just like the face of these oyibo men from Canada. Certainly some highfalutin conspiracy theories!The argument is that Manitoba Hydro should be left completely to do as they seem fit; government should not attempt to monitor their work. We just have to hand over our patrimonial multi-million dollar assets to the very efficient Canadians on trust without any form of direct oversight. Bravo, that is how wise investors operate in corporate boardrooms!
Of course Nebo must still be blamed for inadequacy of gas supply to the thermal power stations. The Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, is chastised for her 'tolerance of the indiscriminate closure of gas facilities for maintenance'; and that is 'indicative that she is not on top of the issues in the sector she superintends.' I am not too sure Madam Minister shouldn't be heading to the supermarket to buy boxing gloves to whip those gas producers into line. Or she may, realising that these gas producers are so dumb,just sweet-talk them into realising that continued indiscriminate closure of their gas facilities means continued depletion of revenue which would have accrued to them to cover for their heavy investments.
Back to Nebo, he should have clairvoyantly seen in 2011 that he was going to be made Minister in 2013 and advised the President on capital budgetary allocations for the Ministry. He must also take the rap for the PHCN labour issue that started with the issue of PHCN privatization; after all, he lacks his predecessor's fighting spirit. The venerable professor should, therefore, go get some sparring lessons, please!
Following interventions to solve the recent system hiccups, actual power generation capabilityhas climbed back to between 4100MW and 4400MW-facts obtainable from Nigerian System Operator website. Meanwhile, the NIPP projects are fast completing with expected additional thousands of megawatts to improve power supply with new sub stations and transmission lines to stabilize the grid system.
*Mr. OSELOKA ZIKORA, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Abuja.
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