Is power Rocket science? Why has power held us hostage for more than 25 years, asks Prof Utomi
By Pat Utomi
It is strange but true. Misery seems to cover the land like the waters cover the sea. And a good part of the misery flows from lack of electric power.
Quality of live is crushed by restless nights and frustrated production effort during the day. Decent sleep at night at a time of heat from near hell is denied the citizen who normally fights back with Air-conditioning. But the national grid seems to be collapsing routinely. And his resort to personally provided alternative has become challenged because the price of Diesel has gone through the roof.
For the few who have work, getting there after a night of not being able to sleep well was relief. Now the office is increasingly unable to afford keeping power on.
Is power Rocket science? Why has power held us hostage for more than 25 years?
The reason is simple – greed, graft and grim visioning.
Vietnam came out of their long war with carpet bombing reducing the infrastructure to pure rubble. On a visit to Vietnam a few years ago, I could not but lament the Nigerian situation. Why would people not as talented act so much smarter? It’s clear the trouble with Nigeria is leadership but how do we allow them to do such damage to our lives?
Nigeria around this time of the year buys up all the Cashew nuts in sight, ships them to Vietnam, which in turn processes them into tasty cashew nuts and ships them off to the world, including us. The reason is they recovered power quickly after the war. With turbines on badges that quickly moved up river from Enron and others, they jump started manufacturing. In Nigeria we have messed around for so long I dread conversations on power lest I break down and begin to weep as Prof Wale Tomori did.
The first problem to tackle is how to ‘detox’ the system of the problem of greed and graft. Even I, as far away as I am, know where some of the bodies are buried.
Then we must decentralize now even if efficiencies of the future may require grid expansion and consolidation.
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Thirdly we must bring in the world’s leading players to compete for territories and provide effectively, especially to production concentrations or clusters as purely commercial undertakings.
Gradually, as economic growth surges, socialized cross subsidization to disadvantaged people can proceed.
The goal must be to power up with a leapfrog mindset the way you do when an army is moving in war. This is not where you bring your friends in to make some money or your cronies to hold positions. You can do favours elsewhere but power is the core of modern civilization and is too central to play games with.
I would be as audacious as to outsource it all to GE with the extraction of several guarantees.
It is also important to work the power revival to align with the manufacturing and growth strategy based on our latent comparative advantage and goal to dominate identified value chains off select factor endowments.
Our possibilities are before us. All we need to do is act and live the values that shape human progress.