Transmission infrastructure neglect worsens power supply – Investigation

For many years, successive governments have focused on power generation, neglecting transmission and its infrastructure.

 Disregard for the upgrade and completion of power transmission infrastructure is one of the major problems that have plagued the nation’s power sector, investigations revealed that between 2012 and now, the Federal Government through the Transmission Company of Nigeria has completed no fewer that 21 power transmission projects.

Sixteen of the projects were completed in 2012, while the remaining five were inaugurated this year.

Findings showed that of the projects completed last year, the government spent about 11 years to deliver five transmission infrastructure.

Two out of the five projects, the 2×30/40MVA, 132/33kV substation in Umuahia and the 132kV double circuit line in Alaoji-Umuahia, both in Abia State, were commenced in November 2001, but dragged till May 2012 before they were completed.

The Mbalano-Okigwe 132kV single circuit line in Abia State was started in September 2001, but was completed in November 2012; while the 150MVA, 330/132/33kV transformer and the 330kV bays in Onitsha, Anambra State, and Benin, Edo State, were completed last year though work began on them in May 2001.

A document on transmission projects completed in 2012, obtained exclusively by our correspondent, showed that it took six years for the government to complete the 2x150MVA, 330/132/33kV substations and line bay at Alaoji, Cross River State.

It took four years to complete the 2x30MVA substation at Makeri in Jos, Plateau State; while the rehabilitation of the Sokoto-Talata Mafara 132kV line was done in five years.

The document stated that the government spent three years on the Afam-Port Harcourt 132kV double circuit turning in and out at the Port Harcourt main transmission station.

It disclosed that three years was also spent on the 1x30MVA, 132/33 KV substation at Kwanar Dangora, Kano State, while the fastest of the projects was the “reconductoring” of the Afam-Port Harcourt 132kV line, which was completed in one year.

Four other transmission projects were completed last year, but their commencement dates of operation were not stated by the document.

Within the last four weeks, TCN completed the in-house installation and inauguration of 60MVA, 45MVA and 30MVA, 132/33kV power transformers in Ibadan, Oyo State; Suleja, Niger State; and Akure, Ondo State, respectively.

Also, a 150MVA, 330/132/33kV power transformer provided by the World Bank through the Power Holding Company of Nigeria’s Project Monitoring Unit was installed in collaboration with TCN engineers within the same period in Ibadan.

Only last week, the transmission company announced the inauguration of a 80MVA substation in Tamburawa, Kano State.

However, the dates of commencement of operation of the projects completed this year were not stated in the document.

Meanwhile, top government sources at the Ministry of Power and the TCN said the neglect for power transmission infrastructure by successive governments led to the weak state of the nation’s transmission network.

According to them, the quantum of power being generated in the country is far higher than what the transmission capacity can handle.

The officials explained that previous administrations had focused on power generation, but relegated transmission to the background.

A senior official in the Power ministry, who pleaded not to be named because he was not authorised to speak on the subject, told our correspondent in Abuja, “This warranted the poor supply of generated power for TCN lacked the capacity to fully transmit the quantum of electricity generated.

“The good news, however, is that the Federal Executive Council, at its meeting last week, approved an amount running into billions of naira for TCN in order to address this shortfall. In addition to that, the government will get additional money warehoused from the African Development Bank to tackle critical problems of transmission.”

Current nationwide power generation is around 4,000 Megawatts, but the Federal Government has announced plans to bring up the figure to 10,000MW before the end of the year.

The state of nation’s transmission infrastructure has, however, been criticised as being too poor to handle the generated power.

This, according to sources, prompted FEC to approve the sum for the transmission company.

The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, had stated that the massive increase in generation underpinned the need for a robust transmission grid, adding that it was the weakest link in the power equation as it had a wheeling capacity of about 4,000MW.

Nebo said, “With government’s objective to achieve 10,000MW by 2014 and 20,000MW in 2016, the urgent need to expand our transmission capability to evacuate the projected additions becomes imminent.

“A total capital outlay of $3.4bn is required up to 2016 to bring our transmission grid to evacuate all the generated power. Government is working out the funding of TCN’s long term expansion plan from a mix, which will include the Transmission Development Fund, International Development Banks and multinational agencies.”

The minister explained that the available installed generation capacity had risen to 6,000MW, while generation capability had increased to 5,228MW with peak generation slightly above 4,500MW.

“We expect to add additional generation capacity of about 2,200MW from NIPP projects; IPPs, 292MW; and Federal Government of Nigeria legacy assets, 514MW before the end of 2013,” the minister added.

It was also learnt that the Federal Government was investing in large, medium and small hydro plants with total capacity of over 4,234MW in order to boost power generation.

UTME may not hold in troubled northern states

Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board on Wednesday said the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination might not hold in troubled states in the North.

The examination, in which over 1, 735,720 candidates are expected to participate in will hold on Saturday.

Addressing journalists in Abuja, the JAMB Registrar/Chief Executive, Prof. ‘Dibu Ojerinde, said the board “may not hesitate to stop the examination if there is any security problem”.

Responding to a question on security challenges in the country, Ojerinde said, “Yesterday it was a big discussion among some agents as well as JAMB. We believe that things will be all right. You see, we believe that we will surmount the problem.

“If however, there is any problem, we may not hesitate to stop the examination in those areas to the extent that we will now give the children a chance of doing the examination on CBT only.

“If you miss Paper Pencil Test in a challenging area that you cannot do the examination, then you will have to do the next one and that will have to be as from May 18.

“With God, we shall not experience any problem. We have put everything humanly possible in place, we have put this before God, and we believe he is not going to sleep on that day. But if there is a need for postponement in those places, we shall not hesitate.”

There have been reported cases of violence occasioned by the activities of the insurgent group, Boko Haram, in many states in the north in recent time.

Meanwhile, Ojerinde, said the Board had concluded arrangement for its first Computer Based Test in 70 centres across the nation from May 18 to June 1.

The CBT, he said, was an alternative to the Dual Based Test and PPT scheduled for Saturday.

Ojerinde said 1,629,102 candidates applied for the IPT, 15,008 candidates for the Dual Based Test while 91,610 candidates applied for the CBT.

He said the figure for 2013 showed an increase of 231,789 applicants when compared with last year’s figure of 1,503,931 representing an increase of 13.35 per cent.

Ojerinde said 145 visually-impaired candidates registered for the examination while 196 inmates registered for it from Kaduna and Lagos prisons.

Portability of Subscriber Identity Module card.“I don port o” – Etisalat ambassador, Hafeez Ayetoro aka Saka, switches to MTN

Saka (Afeez Oyatoro) just upgraded
Hafeez Ayetoro, ace comedian and Nollywood actor, who has become the face of Etisalat for some years now, has switched network from the GSM company he was known with, to telecom giants MTN.
It will be recalled that Hafeez’s face became a part of Etisalat branding for years, I can authoritatively inform you that the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education lecturer, was given an irresistible amount of money to switch allegiance.

The advert starts with Saka dressed in green traditional attire, only to transform into a bright yellow attire as he leads a music band.
“I don port o, I don port go MTN. I don upgrade to MTN,” Saka sings and dances.

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-iweala Talks To Christiane Amanpour

 

 

Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tuesday,stated that President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration will produce results in 2013 even as she claimed that the year is going to be a game changer and turning point for the nation. Dr Okonjo-Iweala who was a guest on Amanpour, said this at the Christiane Amanpour current affairs programme aired on CNN.

The minister further stated that that the Jonathan administration is already producing results even as the macroeconomics stability has been restored.
Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, is full of promise. But fulfilling that promise is often a struggle.
Plagued by corruption and mismanagement, the resource-rich country has a poverty rate of over 50%.
Maternal mortality is shockingly high and more than half of Nigerians don’t have access to electricity, according to the World Bank.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the country’s finance minister and the former World Bank official has been lauded as the reformer Nigeria needs.
But she too isn’t immune from Nigeria’s problems – her own mother was kidnapped for a terrifying five days before being released.
President Goodluck Jonathan promised to address corruption in the country. Nevertheless, a former governor – an ally of Jonathan – has been convicted of embezzling million in public funds and has since been pardoned.
“Nigeria does have a problem with corruption and so do many other countries,” Okonjo-Iweala told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired Tuesday. “I don’t like the fact that when people mention the name Nigeria the next thing they mention is corruption.”
Technology could be the answer the problem, Okonjo-Iweala believes.
“We must build electronic platforms. We must distance people from the money. These things were recommended by the world bank and IMF,” she told Amanpour. “We are doing them.”
President Jonathan is calling for the judiciary, the legislative and the executive arm to meet together about this issue all together for the time first Okonjo-Iweala said.
“Because even if you catch somebody, if they go to courts and they are let off lightly the president can’t do anything about that. The judicial system also has to be strengthened,” she said.
“This is a country of 170 million people; 99.9 percent of them are honest, hard-working citizens who just want to get on with their lives,” Okonjo-Iweala said, proudly. “And they want a government that delivers for them.”
Oil should be Nigeria’s saving grace, but oil leakage causes a significant drain on the economy.
“We are still a poor country,” she admitted. “We can’t afford any leakage.”
On tap of that, there is immense oil theft, which Okonjo-Iweala puts at 150,000 barrels stolen a day. She compared the situation to Mexico, which sees tens of thousands of barrels stolen each day.
“We need them to treat this oil like stolen diamonds. The blood diamonds,” she said – calling on the international community for assistance. “Make it blood oil. Help us so those people don’t have a market to sell this stuff.”
Nigeria is also plagued by problems with its electrical grid.
When the country’s president last appeared on CNN, he told Amanpour, “That is one area that Nigerians are quite pleased with the government, that’s a commitment to improve power. It’s working. So if you are saying something different, I’m really surprised.”
That interview caused an uproar in Nigeria, with many of the county’s very active social media citizens taking to Twitter and Facebook to voice their frustrations with the power grid and President Jonathan’s comments.
Okonjo-Iweala said the power problems all come down to previous government’s lack of investment.
“If you’ve neglected a sector for that long, you’ve not invested, you’ve not even maintained your basic facilities, it’s not going to happen that fast. It takes time,” she said.
While Nigerians often complain of power outages – telling CNN they often have to use generators to watch the news channel – Okonjo-Iweala maintained there has been improvement.
“That month, when you interviewed the president,” she said, referring to Amanpour’s previous interview of Jonathan, “the polls showed, independently, scientifically that they are in technical partnership with dialogue. That 54 percent of Nigerians felt there was some improvement,” she told Amanpour.
“Nigeria is not the only country. Almost every developing country has a problem with power, as you know. India has it. South Africa has it. South Africa is far better off because they’ve invested much more.
But many developing countries, even China, they are struggling with keeping up with infrastructure,” she said.
Okonjo-Iweala said that the administration has accepted that the government is not the best place to run the power sector.
“If we want this country and this economy to do better, we just have to get out. And Nigeria is pursuing one of the most sweeping privatization programs in any country in the world,” she said. “We are selling off everything.”
That said, the lights even went out on President Jonathan during a speech he gave a speech in front of cameras just this past Easter day.
I couldn't upload the video because of the network here. You can download the video here
http://goo.gl/HvIm0

Dangote to build $8bn oil refinery in Nigeria

Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, plans to invest up to $8bn to build a Nigerian oil refinery with a capacity of around 400,000 barrels a day by late 2016, the tycoon told Reuters on Tuesday.

This will almost double Nigeria’s current refining capacity.

“This will really help not only Nigeria but sub-Saharan Africa. There has not been a new refinery for a long time in sub-Saharan Africa,” Dangote said in a telephone interview.

The country currently has the capacity to produce some 445,000 barrels per day among four refineries, but they operate well below that owing to decades of mismanagement and corruption in Africa’s leading energy producer.

Nigeria, the continent’s second-biggest economy, relies on subsidised imports for 80 per cent of its fuel needs.

A surge in domestic capacity would be welcomed by investors in Nigeria, but it would cut into profits made by European refiners and oil traders who would lose part of that lucrative market.

Dangote said the country’s ability to import fuel would soon be challenged.

“In five years, when our population is over 200 million, we won’t have the infrastructure to receive the amount of fuel we use. It has to be done,” he said.

Past efforts to build refineries have often been delayed or cancelled, but analysts have said Dangote should be able to build a profitable Nigerian refinery, owing to his past successes in industry and his strong government connections.

The Dangote Group’s cement manufacturing, basic food processing and other industries have helped lift his personal fortune to $16.1bn from $2.1bn in 2010, according to the latest Forbes estimate.

Nigeria has two refineries in its main Port Harcourt oil hub, one in the Niger Delta town of Warri, and one in Kaduna in the North that serve 170 million people. Not one of them functions at full capacity.

Analysts have said previous attempts to get the refineries going have been held back by vested interests such as fuel importers profiting from the status quo. Dangote said this concerned him.

“The people who were supposed to invest in refineries, who understand the market, are benefiting from there being no refineries because of the fuel import business,” he said. “Some … are going to try to … interfere.”

Nigeria’s government subsidises fuel imports to keep pump prices well below the market rate at a cost of billions of dollars a year. Fuel subsidies are the single biggest item on the country’s budget.

Dangote said making a new refinery run at a profit would work even if the government failed to scrap the subsidised fuel price that has deterred others from investing.

“We’ve done our numbers and the numbers are okay,” he said.

Need For Synergy In Power Sector Reform. GEJ doesn't know what it takes to have constant power supply.

Again, President Goodluck Jonathan has shifted the target for adequate power from December 2013 to June 2014. When the Federal Government initially fixed the deadline for December, this year, and the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as the presidential committees on power sector reform raised the stake on adequate power supply, Nigerians eagerly looked  forward to the deadline. Now, they will have to wait till 2014.
To improve on the relatively stable power supply, especially in the country’s major cities as confirmed by some critical stakeholders in the power sector, an aspect the Federal Government cannot ignore is the apparent lack of team work among the agencies implementing the 2010 Power Sector Roadmap.
 The National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) status reports, presented by the Managing Director and CEO of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), Mr. James Olotu, at several fora point to the absence of team spirit among the agencies driving the reforms in the industry. It is not in doubt that this development has impeded the operations of not only the NIPP, but other sister outfits.
 Among the agencies that must key into the power sector reform to enable the NIPP perform better are the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP).
 It is a known fact across the world that public entities exit to complement the efforts of other agencies to bring better services to the government through the implementation of government policies and programmes. But in Nigeria, this is missing as the agencies engage in unhealthy rivalry, which has derailed the execution of public projects.
If this practice is not checked now by the appropriate authorities, the power sector reform may be stalled, and Nigerians, who are to benefit from the scheme, would suffer and continue to groan under poor power supply.
  It is on record that one of the first major upsets recorded by the NDPHC is the seizure or non-release of power equipment imported by NIPP contractors over the non-payment of duties. The situation assumed a worrisome dimension when the NCS went ahead to auction some of the NIPP containers after they had accumulated demurrage at the Lagos ports and other points of entry. Till date, some of the equipment in four containers are still missing and no one has been made to account for them.
That it took President Goodluck Jonathan’s intervention before the NCS could work out an acceptable arrangement with the NDPHC for the equipment to be released is unhealthy. The power sector deserves the declaration of a state of emergency or quasi-emergency to remove the encumbrances or bureaucratic bottlenecks to NDPHC’s delivery on its core mandate of power generation, transmission and distribution to the end-users.
The NCS revenue drive must not override the larger interest of the Nigerian people. In the future, NCS should explore better approach to resolving matters that affect projects in the power sector.
 It is also a known fact that the inability of the free trade zones spread across the country to operate fully, several years after they were established, is due to a lack of collaboration among the NCS and the operators of the free export processing zones.
 It is lamentable that these zones, which were set up to maximise the country’s export potential, are now comatose. This ugly incident must not be allowed in the power industry, because it drives other sectors of national life.
The Presidential Action Committee on Power and Presidential Taskforce on Power must also rise above board to facilitate the review of the 2010 power sector roadmap to address problems and other issues that were not anticipated when the blueprint was designed.
Vice President Namadi Sambo should sustain his frequent dialogue with NIPP contractors to ensure that they are promptly paid for work done and that the deadlines for all projects in the current year are met.
The authorities should endeavour to strengthen security around the NIPP contractors, especially their expatriates, to curb their frequent kidnapping or attack by bandits.
Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo’s declaration of zero tolerance for saboteurs in the power sector is commendable. His focus should be on ensuring the smooth unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

The General with N300m cash

Everyone in the country today is talking about how unbridled corruption has ruined the nation. But what I think is actually taking place is a celebration of the same vice at every opportunity. It sounds like an institutional hypocrisy whenever the government makes statements indicating an official disposition to confront the demon of corruption that is ravaging the moral fabrics of the Nigerian society. How do we explain, let alone, justify the phenomenon wherein someone who we all saw in the morning without a dime in his pocket suddenly returns home in the evening a multi-millionaire and the family, the community and the state will not ask him questions about the “miracle” affluence.

Last week, nearly all the mass media in the country reported that a top General was almost swindled the sum of N300m in the supposedly ‘cashless Lagos.’ Typically, they failed to disclose the name of the serving army officer who is so rich that he was almost defrauded of such a stupendous sum. The next question should have been: how did he come about such money?

Let’s assume that the General in question is the real “Oga at the top,” it would still be necessary to ask him of the source(s) of so much money. We all know that it is impossible for a serving military officer (be he a Field Marshal) to have amassed so much cash even if he has never spent a dime of his salaries and other legitimate emoluments since enlistment.

In sane societies, the law enforcement agencies would have since been asking how he came about such money. Of course, the taxman would have been knocking at his door seeking to know how much of the lot (loot?) was paid to the society by way of tax. Because this is a miracle economy where anything goes, nobody is going to ask any question in the face of such a glaring mismatch between possible legitimate income and the wealth-in-hand. That explains, for example, why nobody queried the heartless pension fund thieves as they carted away billions of other people’s naira: Not their banks, not their churches, not their families, not the taxman or the police.

People loot the nation and then go to their churches to give testimonies of “what God has done” and the congregation in apparent endorsement chorus: “Hallelujah!” Traditional rulers call them for chieftaincy conferment; equally, fraudulent awards-distributing agencies, both official and private, enthusiastically join in the fray to ‘recognise’ the new rich men in town while the government gives its own final seal to the whole aberration with national awards.

It is really questionable if the society, taking a cue from the churches and the government, is not actively promoting corruption and its associated criminalities by the way it acquiesces to sudden and unexplained affluence. There are many ways to earn good money. It could be from paid employment, business, inheritance, gift or a lottery haul. Of course, more money could also be made (not earned) by heist, robbery and fraud. While the first set of sources are generally legitimate and therefore encouraged and promoted by all decent societies, the other set of sources are strictly forbidden and punishable. Our economy is unduly distorted by corruption as legitimate incomes are made valueless by illegitimate ones: bad money drives away good money, they say.

Unfortunately, the universal code of good behaviour is ignored in Nigeria by all those whose duty it is to enforce same, including religious institutions and the community at large. It would seem as if the operative code of conduct is that which promotes the belief that the “end justifies the means.” This abominable state of affair is made possible by the massive corrosion of societal values by an unethical elite class that has subverted the socio-political process to gain power and, naturally, brought with them a behavioural trait that suited their otherwise low station in life and since it is natural for people to look up to their “elite”, it became the reality that misfits and ill-prepared individuals became the ruling class which then imposed their base culture on everyone below.

The beginning of this moral slide is generally traceable to the unfortunate intervention of the military in the politics of Nigeria which made it possible for erstwhile bodyguards to kill and replace their masters in office as the new helmsmen. Under the new order, anything was possible: powerless today, very powerful tomorrow; poor today, a rich big man tomorrow all with no questions asked. It was a revolution of sorts.

It was also the era in which prophets and pastors who were ex-communicated from the established churches for sundry sins broke away and dispersed to form their own churches, more like businesses than religion, decorated themselves with high ecumenical titles like archbishops, overseers and other bogus names.

Rather than preach about salvation, they opted to harp on prosperity and affluence to congregations already gripped with acute poverty and misery and, naturally, their message hit its target and the churches proliferated while sins blossomed. These were not the pastors that would preach against corruption because their own doctrines were also based largely on corruption and falsehood. Thieves and murderers rush to their ‘fellowships’ to give offerings and in exchange sought spiritual cover for their sins. Everything but righteousness became acceptable!

Whereas it was the expectation of Aristotle and other men of wisdom that only educated (not necessarily with degrees) and cultured people should lead society under his general pontification of the ‘Philosophy King,’ it however became the case that leadership recruitment in Nigeria for a very long time was restricted to coupists and their cronies. That was why before MKO Abiola of blessed memory won a presidential election in 1993, no previous Nigerian leader was formally educated beyond the ordinary level when Ghana already had an Nkrumah with a solid CV while Leopold Senghor, the philosopher, held sway in Senegal, etc.

It became impossible to tell the people that honesty pays when fraudsters, coupists and other felons constituted the ruling class. By whatever means possible, others also want to get to the top and join in the fray, more so, as they couldn’t beat them, and the easiest route, it turned out, is fraud and criminality and that is what has given character to the Nigeria of today where you dare not ask anyone the source of his wealth.

Source (http://goo.gl/a9zlQ)

Izere Imosemi: A Millionaire At 29, That’s Five Years Late!

The title above is a catchy advertising statement that keeps getting my attention in several parts of the city where I live. Each time I see the caption, I ask myself if Nigeria, as it is presently, can actually produce a millionaire at 29 as boldly stated by the advert. As an undergraduate studying Law in a Nigerian university, my dad had a solid piece of advice for me; he would say, ‘Suffer for five years and enjoy forever.’ He said this to motivate me to work very hard at my studies, get good grades and graduate with a First Class or a Second Class Upper Division. He reckoned that whatever inconvenience one had to endure during one’s sojourn as an undergraduate should be borne gallantly, as such inconvenience would be greatly compensated when one graduates with a First Class or Second Class upper division, and thereafter gets rewarded by being gainfully employed, and ultimately enjoys the good things of life. He was convinced that a good university grade was a ‘harbinger’ of the good life the gospel of which he preached to me. I believed him because he meant well. And ‘suffer’ I did, like most students in Nigerian tertiary institutions, where electricity outage was (is) a norm. I literally burnt candles, attended lectures in overcrowded lecture theatres, copied my notes, did my assignments, bought lecturers’ handouts and textbooks at exorbitant prices. In fact, I did everything a good student should do, and what I had to show for it five years after was a very hard-earned second-class upper degree, and a pair of recommended glasses that cannot be done without. My degree certificate, and subsequently my call to Bar certificate, were supposed to be my key to wealth and prosperity, or at the barest minimum, my key to the good life. Now, five years after graduation and almost four years after being called to the Nigerian Bar, I have yet to ‘enjoy’ as my dad promised. This is not just my story; it is the story of many Nigerian youths. A lot of them, brilliant, smart, hard working and ambitious, whose only crime was being born in a society governed by extremely corrupt and selfish leaders. Leaders whose selfish and corrupt acts have not only weakened our institutions, but are threatening to destroy whatever good we have left. Many Nigerian youths at some point, had lofty dreams and aspirations such as conquering the information technology world, or becoming the next Bill Gates, or being ‘somebody’ or doing ‘something’ that would affect the world and perhaps put ‘them’ and their country in the eyes of the world for a positive reason. But, like a friend once wrote on her Facebook page recently, as you grow older, life becomes less about achieving your dreams and more about making your dreams fit into reality because the Nigerian society appears not to be very dream-friendly in terms of helping her youths and the entire citizenry aspire to become the very best they can be. Speaking of Facebook, which a Nigerian minister (who should have known better, with regard to the nature of his office) graciously thanked our President for bringing to our country. One wonders if this minister ever knew that Mark Zuckerberg, one of the four co-founders of the social network site used by almost every internet savvy and not so savvy person in the world, launched the site as a 20-year-old Harvard undergraduate. Presently, not only is Zuckerberg one of the richest young people in the world, thanks to him, social networking has taken on a whole new meaning and a new place in the state of affairs of today’s world. Today, we wonder what a 20-year-old Nigerian can create. The question we should ask ourselves is, were Zuckerberg a Nigerian, (emphasis on born and bred, not American or British trained) would he have founded Facebook? Does the Nigerian society as it is have the capacity to develop geniuses? From all indications, particularly from our decayed educational system and the structural Nigerian system generally, it appears to me that the Nigerian society ‘kills’ geniuses rather than creates a viable environment to promote innovation and enterprise. I attended the last convocation ceremony of the University of Lagos where the overall best graduating student was a mechanical engineering student. Today, I hear he works in a bank in Lagos. If true, how sad! How pathetic! In a sane society, the lad would have been whisked off by the government or some top engineering firm, his intellect would be have been prodded, his mind pushed until the genius in him comes to fore. The just concluded 2012 London Olympics is a case in point too. The abysmal performance of Nigerian athletes has very little to do with the absence of talent or skill but more to do with institutional deficiencies in sport, training and development in the country. The sad truth is that Nigerian youths are working very hard but are barely getting by. What makes the situation sadder and more pitiful is the constant and the seemingly endless reports of corrupt leaders, top government officials, supposedly senior citizens, siphoning public funds brazenly and getting away with it while Nigerian youths watch helplessly as their future is taken out of their reach. In Nigeria, it is commonplace to find many young people between the ages of 25 and 30 years still living with their parents or older relatives, still dependent one way or the other, not by choice but by circumstance. This ought not to be! It is the young that should take care of the old and not vice –versa. It is very frustrating and psychologically debilitating for young people going through this phase. Ideally, in a society that has done its work and paid its dues in bringing up her youths, a 25-30 year-old man or woman should be completely independent of his or her parents or relatives in every sense and should at that age start giving back to the society. This is, sadly, not so in Nigeria; there is nothing normal about this situation and it should not be accepted! Just as a parent of a five-year-old child who still crawls and fails to walk should be alarmed and worried, our leaders should be worried, if at that age the majority of our youths have not attained full financial responsibility and are still being catered for like teenagers or children. This is really sad and portends great danger for the future of our country. Beyond the failed political leadership and poor economic situation that have plagued our country and contributed to the pitiful plight of Nigerian youths, it seems that the society is configured to regard young people as incompetent and incapable. A little while ago, a serving youth corps member at the National Assembly in an article in a national newspaper wrote that youth corps members serving in the National Assembly were reduced to mere errand boys to carry out menial assignments like serving tea and kola nuts to the lawmakers. If true, how derogatory and demeaning! What a waste of young active minds and talents! It is time our leaders realised that young people in the right environment, with the right motivation and the right education can effectively hold positions of leadership and execute projects brilliantly. One does not have to be 50 years old before one becomes a CEO; a 28-year-old CEO can do just fine! And a 30-year-old senator can do just fine too, after all, what good have our older politicians and leaders done? In reality, becoming a millionaire at the age of 24 in Nigeria without making recourse to ‘yahoo yahoo’ (Nigerian acronym for internet fraud), pilfering funds, or being used as a political thug or winning the grand prize in the Big Brother Africa or any other reality TV shows or becoming a pop star or sportsman, is a near impossibility. It is possible to become a millionaire at the age of 24 legitimately (as Mark has shown us), in a society that is engineered to encourage and reward hard work. Truthfully, Nigeria is not that society yet and until Nigeria becomes that society, corporate organisations and advertising agencies need to be very mindful of the messages behind their advertisements. It is my humble submission that, to put up an advertisement with an inscription that reads ‘a millionaire at 29, that’s 5years too late’ to promote a product that is largely patronised by young people in Nigeria, is to throw existing realities into the bin in the name of creativity. -Imosemi, a partner in the law firm of Fieldings and Grey Solicitors, Lagos wrote in via izereimosemi@yahoo.co.uk

Expect more power cuts, minister tells Nigerians

The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, on Wednesday said there would be more power cuts in the days ahead due to ongoing maintenance works on installations across the country.

Nebo, while explaining why there was a sharp drop in power supply at a briefing in Abuja, said the country lost 1,112 megawatts of generated electricity in two days due to the shutdown of the Chevron gas plant.

He said, “A few days ago, precisely last week Friday, Chevron shut down its gas plant for maintenance purposes, which was to take place between Friday and Saturday. And the technical crew in the power sector knew about the shutdown and this was in order to make sure that damages are not done before losing the gas entirely.

“From time to time, there is going to be shutdown and it happened two times recently between Benin and Osogbo. If you don’t shut down these plants in order to have a safe restarting process, you are going to lose the equipment. Once routine maintenance is done, the process of restarting the machines that were shut down takes some time.”

He said two power stations were affected by the recent shutdown, stressing that the oil company and the ministry’s technicians had to maintain the plants.

The minister added, “That is why between two and three days, we lost some 1,112MW. That means Omotoso and Olorunsogo plants were forced to shut down because there was no gas supply. By design, Chevron has to maintain the gas pipelines and it was so.

“You will notice that from Monday, we started seeing some increase that has stabilised. Right now, we have over 3,300MW.”

Nebo gave an assurance that occasional system failures would be addressed.

He said, “With regards to occasional system failures, we are in the process of reviving the huge section of the transmission machinery, especially the lines that are aged, failing, dilapidated and in need of replacement. We are working on that.

“And for that reason, whenever a significant part of the transmission network encounters serious technical problems, you will experience system shutdown. And whenever you have a serious problem, you must shut down in order to make sure that the system is not overloaded at one end and create problems throughout the entire country.”

The PUNCH had exclusively reported on Wednesday that the nation had witnessed a significant drop in power generation from a peak of 4,517MW attained on December 21, 2012 to 3,443MW on Tuesday.

The 1,074MW drop is, however, a slight improvement on the 2,987.6MW peak generation recorded on April 6, 2013, when a whopping 1,529.4MW was lost.

The minister also said that the meeting with labour unions in the power sector over workers’ final entitlements had been cordial and that very soon, private investors would take over the power companies they bid for.

He also said the issue with Manitoba Hydro International over the management contract for the Transmission Company of Nigeria had been resolved, stressing that the transmission infrastructure had received a boost.

“Manitoba has received the schedule of delegated authority and most issues in the sector have been resolved,” Nebo added.

Megalomania, mediocrity and the complicity of the middle class

I find it hard to reconcile the megalomania that abounds in Nigeria with the abundant evidence of the unpredictability of human existence.

I’ll explain.

Earlier this year, I spotted an ex-governor at the Abuja airport. We had come off the same flight and he was walking towards the car park, unaccompanied. I walked up to him to say hello, trying to imagine what might be going through Mr. ex-governor’s mind. Did he ever recall his days as governor, the entourage that’d have been waiting for him at the airport in Abuja, the ride to town in a siren-laden convoy designed to run everyone else off the road? Did he ever think to himself what things he’d have done differently as governor?

There’s, of course, an even more striking example of life’s unpredictability: That of a man called Goodluck Jonathan. If there had been a list of powerful deputy governors in Nigeria at the start of 2005, he wouldn’t have been on it.

But hey, human existence thrives on mischievous levels of unpredictability. Without seeking promotion, by the end of that year, Mr. Jonathan was Governor! It didn’t end there. Barely two years later, he was a Vice-President, again without seeking it. It still didn’t end there. In 2008, the United States compiled a confidential list of the most influential Nigerians. Even as Vice-President, Jonathan failed to make that list. In the scheme of all things Nigerian, he really didn’t count much. Yet it didn’t end there either. Fast-forward four years, and that same man makes it onto Time Magazine’s list of most influential persons in the world.

And that story is not over, it’s still being written. Such is life. Dramatic reversals, intriguing unpredictability.

Now, you’d expect that, faced with this sort of unpredictability, people would go into public office firmly aware of the responsibility they have to make the best use of the opportunity granted them: By acting as fairly and wisely as they can, utilising public funds as wisely and judiciously as possible; treating the people they rule with dignity.

But no. That’s not how things typically play out. Nigerians in political offices too easily assume themselves gods – possessing all wisdom, deserving of all worship and adulation, undeserving of any criticism, entitled to sacrifice public funds in self-worship.

It leaves me puzzled. What is it that makes us as Nigerians so liable to viewing power solely through prisms of egotism and self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement?

I was at an event a few days ago, where Ekiti Governor Kayode Fayemi lamented how Nigerians have come to “associate power and authority with intimidation and harassment”, and highlighted the need to urgently “demystify” political office.

Perhaps, Fayemi’s stance is based on an understanding of the unpredictability I referred to at the beginning of this piece. At that event he also recounted how, until Sani Abacha’s death in 1998, he (Fayemi) was deemed a “persona non grata” by the Nigerian government, because of his involvement with the National Democratic Coalition and Radio Kudirat. Today, things have changed; the man hounded by yesterday’s government is a now prominent member of today’s. I have a copy of Fayemi’s account of the Nigerian pro-democracy struggle, and always find myself fascinated by the pictures of his life in London in the early nineties, when he was a placard-carrying activist and struggling PhD student. It leaves me wondering to what extent his views on the need to demystify political office in Nigeria are fed by his recollections of those inauspicious beginnings in London two decades ago, and by his realisation that no one is a governor forever.

There are important questions we all need to answer about this Big-Manism thing: Is it the nature of political power to remake people? How does that work – is it by disconnecting people from the realities of past and present life? Does it fill people up with a sense of their own importance, and of the absolute insignificance of everybody else, to such an extent that commonsense is crowded out?

We’ve all seen Nigerians who got into political power and mutated into strange creatures, acting like the power they wielded would always be their birthright, defended the indefensible, picked needless battles against the people on whose side they once appeared to be. We’ve all seen supposedly ‘humble’ people get into office and turned into walking advertisements for megalomania; and once sensible people acquired reputations for spouting nonsense.

How, for example, does a President Goodluck Jonathan who stoically bore the brunt of the turmoil surrounding the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s illness would go ahead to put Nigeria through the same style of deception over the health of his wife? Did Nigerians resist one oppressive state of affairs only to have the beneficiaries of that resistance replace the oppressors?

Worsening the state of affairs is the shocking acquiescence by the majority of the governed, especially the middle class. Let’s for a second leave Nigeria’s bottom-millions out of this – let’s assume they don’t know any better, that they’re so hamstrung by poverty to realise that they’re incapable of realising that the people who should be empowering them to fish have perfected the art of swindling them with meagre handouts of fish. What excuse does Nigeria’s educated, enlightened middle class have for tolerating all the nonsense we do? Do we underestimate the ability we have to influence governance, to ‘terrify’ elected representatives into sensible-ness?

Every day, hundreds of Nigerians pass through the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos and are subjected to the myriad humiliations cultivated within that space. Without fail, we all complain and moan; shake our heads at how Nigeria never fails to humiliate us. Sometimes, you get a raised voice or two. But nothing really happens next. We’ve grown used to it – to the dysfunction, and the complaining it triggers. And life goes on.

Perhaps, in tolerating, and sometimes aiding and abetting megalomania and vision-less Big-Manism (which, by the way, always come Siamese-twinned with mediocrity), we truly deserve our leaders. That’s definitely worth thinking about. Also worth thinking about is this: the strong possibility that things will never change for the better in Nigeria. In 2020, maybe, I will still be here rehashing my columns from seven years before, wondering why Nigeria is the way it is.

One more thing. I don’t want to sound like I’m saying Nigeria requires saints in the corridors of power. There are no saints anywhere. All of us, as human beings, are driven by some level of self-interest, by a quest for personal significance. But there is a clear difference between the kind of self-interest that can allow itself to be subordinated to a clear vision of leadership and service, and the one that merely seeks to self-satisfy.

The Action Group that did wonders with the proceeds from cocoa in the defunct Western Region all those decades ago wasn’t an assemblage of saints. I’ve read about panels of enquiry set up to probe corrupt acts in those days – those men didn’t always emerge with clean hands. But when it came to the larger picture – matters of visionary goal-setting and a burning desire to bring real and lasting improvement to the lives of citizens – they almost never failed those tests. Obviously, the sinners of yesteryears will be saints to those currently running the affairs of the nations.

Source (http://goo.gl/Jds2F)

FG set to scrap NECO, cancels UTME

Federal Government has concluded arrangements to scrap the National Examination Council.

Plans have also been concluded to cancel the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination being conducted by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board for applicants into the nation’s tertiary institutions.

JAMB will however not be scrapped.

The government’s decisions, which would be made public soon via a White Paper, are based on the recommendations of the Stephen Oronsaye-led Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies.

A government source told our  correspondent that the decisions were part of the recommendations made by a White Paper Committee set up by the government on the Oronsaye report.

The source added that upon receipt of the latest report, President Goodluck Jonathan has been meeting with Vice-President Namadi Sambo and a few top government officials to take final decisions on it.

It was in one of such meetings held on Tuesday that the final decision was taken.

Under the new arrangement, the source said in place of UTME, authorities of all tertiary institutions would now be at liberty to conduct their entrance examinations as they had been doing for post-UTME.

JAMB will however serve as a clearing house.

“JAMB will now be a clearing house like Universities and Colleges Admissions Service in the UK. If somebody gains admission into three universities and holds down space, immediately such person picks his first choice, JAMB’s system will automatically free the remaining two slots for other applicants.

“JAMB will no longer conduct examinations but it will be setting the standard alongside the schools authorities,” the source said.

UCAS, which was  established in 1993, is the British admission service for students applying to university and college, including post-16 education as of 2012. UCAS is primarily funded by students who pay a fee when they apply and a capitation fee from universities for each student they accept.

On NECO, the source said in arriving at the decision to scrap the examination body, the committee took into cognizance its huge facilities across the country.

But it was resolved that the West African Examination Council would absorb NECO’s members of staff and its facilities.

WAEC will also be empowered to conduct two Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations per year, one in January and the other probably in December.

Hitherto, only one November/December SSCE Examination is being conducted.

The May/June Senior Secondary Certificate Examination being organised by the examination body once in a year still stands.

The government source also said arrangements had been concluded to scrap the Public Complaint Commission, the National Poverty Eradication Programme and the Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution among others.

Source - http://goo.gl/iA3oW