For more than five decades, successive governments have spoken of Mambila with the confidence of leaders announcing a project that is just around the corner. Administrations have endorsed it, agreements have been signed, financing arrangements explored, contractors identified and deadlines announced. Yet the project remains largely where it has been for years, on paper.
By Shu’aibu Usman Leman
Some Nigerian infrastructure projects have existed for so long that they have ceased to sound like practical proposals and become almost mythical. The Mambila Hydropower Project is perhaps the clearest example.
For more than five decades, successive governments have spoken of Mambila with the confidence of leaders announcing a project that is just around the corner. Administrations have endorsed it, agreements have been signed, financing arrangements explored, contractors identified and deadlines announced. Yet the project remains largely where it has been for years, on paper.
That is why the renewed demand by the North-East Governors’ Forum deserves more than the routine attention usually given to another government communiqué. At its 13th meeting in Maiduguri, the Forum again urged the Federal Government to move ahead with the Mambila Hydropower Project, particularly following the recent arbitration ruling that cleared a major legal obstacle to its implementation.
The governors are right to press the matter. After more than half a century, patience has ceased to be a virtue and risks becoming an excuse for inaction.
The origins of Mambila go back more than five decades. That makes the project older than many of the Nigerians now responsible for deciding its fate. A Nigerian child born when the project was first being conceived could have completed primary and secondary education, attended university, undertaken national service, built a career, raised a family and reached retirement age while the country continued to debate the same hydropower scheme.
This is no longer simply the story of a delayed power project. It is a reflection of Nigeria’s extraordinary capacity to postpone the future.
The proposed Mambila project, with generation capacity running into several thousand megawatts, could substantially strengthen Nigeria’s electricity supply and provide an important economic stimulus to the North-East. If completed and supported by adequate transmission infrastructure, its benefits would extend far beyond electricity generation.
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Reliable power would enable entrepreneurs to operate beyond daylight hours without depending entirely on expensive generators. It would allow agro-processing businesses to become more competitive, improve the reliability of hospitals and schools, support irrigation and create conditions in which manufacturers and other investors could begin to regard the region as a more attractive destination for capital.
For a region that has endured insecurity, unemployment, infrastructure deficits and weak private investment, dependable electricity could provide an important foundation for economic recovery.
Power is not a luxury. It is fundamental economic infrastructure.
The North-East Governors’ Forum has, to its credit, also considered other interventions, including solar projects, mini-grids, gas initiatives and greater utilisation of existing facilities such as Dadinkowa in Gombe State. These measures are necessary because the region cannot afford to wait for one enormous project before addressing its immediate electricity needs.
But smaller interventions should complement rather than replace a serious long-term regional power strategy. Nigeria needs a diversified electricity system in which hydropower, gas, solar and other sources reinforce one another. Mambila should not become an excuse to neglect projects that can deliver electricity more quickly, just as those projects should not become an excuse for abandoning a development scheme of Mambila’s scale.
There is, however, another important point that should not be lost in the enthusiasm surrounding the project’s proposed capacity. That is, that generating electricity is not the same as delivering electricity to homes, businesses and industries.
For Mambila to transform the North-East, the Federal Government must simultaneously address transmission, evacuation infrastructure, distribution capacity, grid stability and the commercial arrangements necessary to make the investment sustainable.
The project should therefore be regarded not simply as the construction of a dam and power station, but as part of a broader strategy for transforming the region’s economy.
For years, one of the principal obstacles surrounding Mambila was the dispute involving Sunrise Power and Transmission Company. The dispute concerned claims arising from a 2003 Build-Operate-Transfer arrangement associated with the project and eventually proceeded to arbitration before the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris.
The controversy complicated efforts to move the project forward, including financing discussions involving China’s Export-Import Bank, and became one of the principal explanations for the project’s prolonged stagnation.
The recent ICC arbitration ruling in favour of the Federal Government is therefore significant. The tribunal rejected Sunrise’s claims and awarded substantial costs against the company and its promoter. The Federal Government has presented the ruling as removing a major obstacle that had contributed to the project’s prolonged stagnation. But it is important to distinguish between removing a legal obstacle and delivering a power project.
An arbitration ruling does not secure financing, mobilise contractors, acquire land, compensate affected communities, construct transmission lines or generate a single additional megawatt of electricity. What it can do is remove one of the reasons that government has repeatedly cited for the project’s inability to proceed.
If that legal obstacle has now been cleared, the Federal Government should be able to tell Nigerians, with considerably more precision, what happens next. This is where the current administration should be judged.
Nigerians have heard enough broad declarations of commitment to Mambila. What is required now is a sequence of measurable actions against which progress can be assessed.
The first question is financing. What is the current estimated cost of the project? What financing structure is being proposed? How much will the Federal Government contribute, and what commitments have been secured from international or private financing partners?
The financial assumptions that surrounded Mambila several years ago cannot simply be recycled. Construction costs have changed, international financing conditions have changed and Nigeria’s own fiscal circumstances have changed.
The second question is the timetable. When will financial close be achieved? When will procurement begin? When will construction actually commence? And when is the first unit expected to generate electricity? After more than five decades, Nigerians should not be asked to accept another vague assurance that work will begin “soon”.
The third question concerns the communities that will be affected by the project. Land acquisition, compensation, resettlement and environmental concerns must be handled transparently and fairly. Local communities should not be treated as an afterthought once construction has begun. A project intended to transform the North-East must also command the confidence of the people who will live with its consequences.
Finally, there must be a credible plan for transmitting and evacuating the electricity that Mambila will generate. A power station capable of producing several thousand megawatts without adequate infrastructure to carry its output to consumers would simply become another monument to poor planning.
There is also a tendency to discuss Mambila principally in terms of the enormous amount of money required to build it, without asking the equally important question of what the prolonged absence of the project has cost Nigeria and, particularly, the North-East.
For decades, businesses across the country have spent enormous sums on diesel and petrol generators because of unreliable electricity. Industries have located elsewhere because of the cost and uncertainty associated with power supply, while entrepreneurs have struggled to establish viable businesses in environments where productive activity becomes increasingly expensive once the generators are switched on.
The North-East has paid its own price for inadequate infrastructure, and every additional year of delay represents another year of lost economic opportunity.
This does not mean that Mambila should be built regardless of cost or without proper feasibility studies, environmental safeguards, procurement rules and financial scrutiny. A project of this scale must be subjected to rigorous technical and financial discipline.
But once government establishes that the project is viable, it must also demonstrate the institutional capacity and political will to complete it rather than allowing another generation to inherit the same promise.
The Federal Government must therefore resist the temptation to measure progress by announcements, meetings, memoranda and ceremonial events. Mambila has already accumulated enough of those. What matters now is whether there is a transparent implementation framework against which Nigerians can measure progress, like financing secured, procurement completed, land and community issues resolved, construction commenced, transmission infrastructure developed and electricity eventually delivered.
Such a framework would make it considerably more difficult for future administrations to quietly inherit the project, reopen fundamental decisions and eventually explain another decade of delay.
Mambila needs institutional ownership rather than dependence on the enthusiasm of whichever president happens to occupy Aso Rock. If it is genuinely a national priority, its implementation should survive political transitions and be governed by clear milestones that can be monitored by the National Assembly, civil society, the media and, most importantly, the communities that will host and benefit from the project.
President Bola Tinubu inherited a project with an extraordinary history of delay, but that history also presents his administration with an unusual opportunity.
Completing Mambila would be more than another infrastructure achievement. It would demonstrate that Nigeria can take a major national project from conception to completion despite the legal, financial, bureaucratic and political obstacles that have defeated so many others. But achieving that would require more than another presidential declaration of commitment.
The administration needs to put forward a credible financing plan, a procurement strategy, a construction timetable, a transmission and evacuation plan, and a clear framework for dealing with affected communities. Most importantly, it needs to establish milestones by which Nigerians can determine whether the project is actually moving forward.
The North-East certainly needs more than Mambila. It needs better roads and rail connections, irrigation, agricultural processing, digital infrastructure, industrial investment, renewable energy and stronger transmission and distribution networks.
But none of these needs diminishes the importance of finally resolving the Mambila question. Rather, they reinforce the case for treating reliable electricity as part of a comprehensive strategy for transforming the region’s economy.
After more than five decades, there is little left to debate about whether Mambila is desirable. The project has been studied, discussed, negotiated, announced and revived through enough administrations to occupy several chapters of Nigeria’s infrastructure history.
What remains is the difficult part of taking the decisions, securing the money, resolving the practical issues and beginning construction.
The recent resolution of the long-running legal dispute should therefore mark the beginning of a new phase, not another chapter in the history of excuses.
President Tinubu now has a choice. He can allow Mambila to remain a magnificent, perpetually resurrected promise, invoked whenever the North-East asks why it continues to suffer an infrastructure deficit. Or he can make its completion one of the defining achievements of his administration.
After more than five decades, Nigerians no longer need another promise that Mambila will be built.
They need the electricity.
