When PDP came to power in 1999 Nigeria was generating about 4,000 MW of electricity. After 15 years and $20 billion spent we are generating between 3,000 and 4,000 MW.
Presidential Candidate Muhammadu Buhari, November 2014
As published in ThisDay, February 22, 2015 on the eve of the presidential elections that swept Goodluck Jonathan out of office, the following statement was made by Jonathan’s Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo, during the re-commissioning ceremony of the privatized Egbin Power Plant in Lagos State:
“Your Excellency, since privatisation, the power sector has received as it were a new baton to move Nigeria to the next level of moving in the direction of uninterrupted power supply. Your Excellency, since privatisation and handing over to the private sector, distribution and generation value chains of the electricity sector, we have seen an employment of over 2,000 engineers hired in the sector. Your Excellency, please remember that for 16 years before you became President, the entire power sector in the country under both NEPA and PHCN did not hire a single engineer. The level of dilapidation of the power sector that you inherited was so huge that it was not only with regards to material components but also with regards to human resources. It was also with regards to funding that was allowed to go so low that it appeared the power sector had become an orphan”
Please note Professor Nebo’s observation that in the 16 years prior to Jonathan’s ascendancy to the presidency, the entire power sector in Nigeria had been in such a state of “dilapidation” that it seemed to have “become an orphan” grossly lacking in vital human and material inputs that could have made it capable of resolving the nation’s perennial crises of inadequate and irregular power generation and distribution. Note that for most of those 16 years before Jonathan came to power, his party, the PDP, was in power. Note also that the PDP presidents before Jonathan, Obasanjo and Yar’ Adua, had in fact disbursed billions of petrodollars for the resuscitation of this sector, all to no avail. Finally and finally, please note that Professor Nebo’s boast about the unique “achievement” of the Jonathan administration within the 16-year reign of the PDP pertains to the fact that energy production in Nigeria rose to its highest level ever in the country, this being 5,500 Megawatts. But as soon as you compare this “achievement” with energy production around the planet, it is actually one of the lowest per capita, not only in the world at large, but within the African continent itself. I pass silently over the fact that among all the nations of the world, we have an unusually high and even superabundant supply of the raw materials needed to generate and supply power to our peoples – fuel oil; natural gas; coal; water; sun and wind. But this question I will not pass over: at the dawn of the reign of the new ruling party, will things be different in the energy sector?
In the context of this series based on Aliko Dangote’s lecture at Harvard University on October 29, 2015, this question is directed as much to our business elites as to our political rulers. As a matter of fact, I am directing the question more to our business moguls that to the government. In doing this, I ask the reader to please remember that I started this series with the following question that was prompted by Dangote’s lecture at Harvard on October 29: why is it that our business elites have never considered that they could be part of the solution to our perennial crisis of power generation and distribution? Let me now proceed directly to a discussion of this all-important question.
It is perhaps useful to place these astounding observations of mine against the historical background of electrification as a vital part of economic, technological and cultural modernity throughout the planet. Historically, there are essentially only two paradigms or patterns available to us as models. The first and by far the more familiar paradigm is that of effective electrification by modernizing capitalist elites who were real industrial, commercial and financial haute bourgeoisieand on that basis used their influence with politicians and the state to construct power generation and distribution monopolies that were later broken up into smaller enterprises. Western Europe, North America and Japan are of course the big exemplars of this paradigm. Parenthetically, let me add here that history provides no single instance of bands of “emergency” contractors and business moguls that successfully led their nations to complete and adequate electrification of the nation and its economy.
The second and far more limited but no less effective paradigm pertains to socialist or communist states that used the mechanisms of a centralized, command economy to rapidly construct successful national power grids as a vital sector in the drive towards economic, social and cultural development. One of the most memorable examples of this particular paradigm is that revealed in the slogan of the Bolsheviks when they came to power in Russia: “socialism = collectivization + electrification”. Within one decade the Bolsheviks transformed Tsarist Russia, one of the most backward countries in Europe into one of the economic and political powerhouses of the world; effective electrification of the country and the economy was one of the engines of that spectacular achievement. Maoist and Post-Maoist China and Cuba are also shining exemplars of this paradigm.
It is of course indisputable that Nigeria under the new ruling party, the APC, is most definitely not about to take the path of the Bolsheviks and other socialist or state-capitalist nations of the world in installing full, adequate and reliable electrification in Nigeria. In ideological temper, the new ruling party is at best Centre-Right; the handful of Centre-Left thinkers and politicians in its ranks wield no real influence in both the party and the federal and state governments that the party controls. Moreover, at the current historical moment, very few countries in the world seem poised to follow the socialist path of the command economy and its model of technological modernity with particular relevance to rapid, complete or adequate electrification. In these contexts that are both national and global, the question that arises with regard to prospects of full and adequate electrification in APC-ruled Nigeria is this: Can or will the ruling party successfully apply the paradigm of true capitalist modernization in the energy sector and if so, what will be the contribution of our business elites to that process?
Any regular reader of this column knows that if I had a say in the matter, we would choose the socialist path of rapid, complete and reliable electrification. Beyond ideology, there is a profoundly humane aspect to this preference: socialism places human beings, their needs and aspirations above economic production either an end in itself or as a means of surplus accumulation by the wealthy and the powerful. But since, as I have said earlier, it would be extremely unrealistic or delusional of me or anyone to expect that the APC governments at the centre and in the states are likely to choose this socialist path, the burden that lies squarely on the shoulders of the Buhari administration is to successfully apply the well known paradigm of the capitalist path. But since in this series I have been more interested in the contribution of our business elites, I must save the last words here for that group.
Nothing proves more decisively that oil wealth has effectively wiped out the small, bourgeoning group of real capitalist industrialists and entrepreneurs that we had when the national economy was based on cash crops and light consumer goods industrialization than the ridiculously miniscule quantity of power generated in our country at great expense. At all times since the coming of oil doom, actual production of power has trailed far behind installed capacity for production; and both installed capacity and actual production have been one of the lowest per capita in Africa and in the world. Significantly, neither state-controlled energy production and distribution nor massive privatization has made the slightest dent in the abysmal quantity and erratic nature of power production in the sector. For this reason, we may conclude that there are no true capitalists in government or business in our country.
In Dangote’s lecture at Harvard on October 29, 2015, I heard distinct intimations that he represents an emerging group of real capitalist industrialists and entrepreneurs. If this is true, will Dangote and these small groups among our business moguls please step forward, separate themselves from the majority of “emergency” or “barawo” capitalists in our country and lead the way to complete, regular and reliable electrification in Nigeria and our region of the continent? This will enormously make life much better for all our peoples. Moreover, the reduction that this would create in the cost of doing business in our country and our West African region is literally incalculable. In turn, this will create a vast internal market of actual and potential consumers in the region that will be numbered in scores of millions, most definitely one of the biggest regional markets in the world. And indeed, it boggles the mind that our business moguls that regard themselves as more than mere “agbero”, “barawo” or “emergency” contractors and businessmen have never set their sights, their prospects of surplus accumulation this high. It makes one wonder whether indeed there are true capitalists in our country beyond the philistine, lumpen-bourgeois hordes that emerged in the wake of the oil doom. I happen to think that there are; indeed, I personally know a few among them. What I have never observed among their ranks is a sense of critical self-awareness of themselves as a group on whom the fate of capitalism in our part of the world depends. Dr, Yemi Ogunbiyi, CEO and Chairman TANUS Books Limited, I swear I am not thinking of you as I write these words!
NATION
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