AT LAST, the Geometric Power Group, alias the Aba Integrated Power Plant, AIPP, was formally switched into life on Monday, February 26, 2024 at Osisioma, a suburb of the Aba urban agglomeration. The commissioning was performed by our amiable Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, who represented President Bola Tinubu. He was proudly assisted by Governor Alex Chioma Otti, in the presence of Professor Barth Nnaji, Geometric Power Group’s indefatigable founder, and other dignitaries.
One key figure was missing in the picture: living legend, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who can rightly be described as the mother of the project. Those of us from Abia State are proud and honoured to have Madam Ngozi as one of us. Apart from the enviable heights she has achieved in life, Madam Ngozi, an Ugwashi-Uku (Delta State) princess and daughter of professor parents, is married to Ikemba Iweala, a neurosurgeon from Umuda Isingwu, in Umuahia. Madam Ngozi came to Abia State like a true daughter of the soil burning with the zeal to bring the benefits of her elevated position to the people.
The Aba Power Plant is one of the numerous proofs of this assertion. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, one of the greatest African leaders of all time, invited Madam Ngozi from the World Bank to manage our economy in 2003. A year later, Madam Ngozi invited her former colleague and President of the World Bank, (the now late) James Wolfohnson, to check out Aba as a place that deserved to be helped to actualise its huge industrial and entrepreneurial potentials. Power deficiency was immediately identified as the major militating factor.
Luckily, the entourage included Barth Nnaji, a Professor of Robotics, innovator, system builder and politician. Nnaji, who has been twice a Minister, was encouraged by Madam Ngozi and Wolfohnson to set up a power plant in Aba, an initiative he readily embraced.
Nnaji had tried to establish a machine spare-parts plant in his native Enugu State with his Korean partners, but lack of power scuttled the effort. In 2001, he was handed an opportunity to prove his mettle, and he successfully established a 22 megawatt independent power plant to power the State House, NNPC Towers and the Central Business District, Abuja.
With this track record, the World Bank felt confident in providing the initial start-up capital for the $800 million Aba Power Plant.
The project received a further boost when Dr Alex Otti emerged as the Group Managing Director, GMD, of then Diamond Bank PLC in 2011. He led a consortium of financiers, such as the Asset Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON; Stanbic IBTC Bank and others, to inject capital into the project. Otti had, within three years of his appointment, transformed Diamond Bank from a floundering financial institution into a profitable one, and a major pillar of the then stable Nigerian financial system.
Otti had just been appointed to a second term by the Bank in 2014 when pressures from concerned Abia stakeholders, including my humble self, prevailed on him to abandon his juicy bank job to join politics. We felt he was the person needed to rescue the state from its “all you can eat” political class. Otti was on course to win the 2015 election as the flagbearer of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, when departing former Governor Theodore Orji led a posse of panicky Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, leaders to hijack the election result at the collation centre in Umuahia, on live TV, in favour of their handpicked candidate, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu.
Otti ran for governor two more times. In 2023, he won, and only because a God-fearing Abia State Returning Officer, Professor Nnenna Oti, refused to give in to the buccaneers’ bribes and threats.
Geometric got mired in malicious litigations with the concessionaire, Enugu Electric Distribution Company, EEDC. Ikpeazu was simply unable to break the deadlock until towards the end of his tenure, before work resumed at the power plant.
Karma appeared to have been at work here. The plant seemed to be waiting for one of its founding fathers to come into power before coming alive. I have no doubt that the Aba Power Plant would long have been a reality if Otti had assumed office in 2015. EEDC chairman, Emeka Offor, is a personal friend of Otti. Matters should have been ironed out to allow the project move forward.
What we have seen so far is the end of a difficult cycle and beginning of another. I urge Nnaji and his team to work harder and see the project fully actualised to make power available and affordable to willing consumers. It is one thing to switch on with great ceremony. It is another to stay switched on. There will be teething problems, and they must be systematically tackled from the service provider’s end. The governor must stand ready to assist because steady power supply is key to his lofty visions.
The people also need to be properly reoriented. They are now on the threshold of a modern capitalist setting. They must be ready for business. They must upgrade to mental attitudes required in an economy that runs on 24/7/365 power supply. The world and the rest of Nigeria are watching to see how the Aba Power Plant works out. If Geometric succeeds, there will be a stampede. The sun will rise again in the East. Kudos to the Federal Government for letting this happen!
The “Aku Ruo Ulo” Igbo backward integration model, pioneered in Aba by Prof. Nnaji, Prof Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Dr Alex Otti, is now activated. Now that the light has been lit, let it shine in all corners of the Great “Dot” enclave and onto all corners of the nation. As the Great Zik of Africa, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, would say:
“Show them the light, and they will find their way”.
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