November 17, (THEWILL) – The disclosure by the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ola Olukeyede, that corruption is at the heart of the intermittent collapse of the national grid in recent time, raises doubts about any remedy in the foreseeable future.
This is because corruption in Nigeria is not just a national pastime but also the grease that runs government machinery. Recall that late Chief Bola Ige, who once served as Minister of Power, boasted that he would restore power in six months. But he ended up requesting to be transferred to the Federal Ministry of Justice and appointed as Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. Another Minister, Professor Chinedu Nebo once ridiculously traced the problem to witches and wizards, whom he vowed to tame but to no avail. Corruption defeated them. More than two decades after their failure in office, electricity is as epileptic and unavailable as ever. The chief culprit is corruption. This is shameful, condemnable injustice against Nigerians who have had to endure this continued malfeasance in government.
With barely two months to the end of this year, nobody knows when the next national grid will collapse; the national grid has collapsed 12 times in this year alone. In fact, in the last week, the grid collapsed twice.
In all of those occasions, the Transmission Company of Nigeria has attributed the cause to vandalism targeting transmission lines and towers. The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, on the other hand, says it has to do with decayed infrastructure.
Indeed, the military is said to have reportedly located the bad spots where bandits and terrorist attacked and damaged transmission lines. There is no doubt that there is substance in this piece of information. TCN’s General Manager for Public Affairs, Mrs. Ndidi Mbah, disclosed the recent attack in which vandals damaged the 330kV Lokoja-Gwagwalada transmission line early last Saturday. According to Mbah, TCN engineers attempted to re-energise the line that morning, only for it to trip repeatedly.
But none compares to the full disclosure by Olukeyede.
Speaking when members of the House of Representatives Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes visited the Commission’s headquarters last Tuesday, the anti-graft boss said contractors in the power sector purchased inferior materials to execute their contracts, which is the reason for the frequency grid collapses.
He said, “As I am talking to you now, we are grappling with electricity. If you see some of the investigations we are carrying out within the power sector, you will shed tears.
“People who were awarded contracts to supply electricity equipment, instead of using what they call 9.0 gauge, will go and buy 5.0. Every time you see the thing tripping off, the thing gets burnt, all of that falters and it collapses. It’s part of our problems.”
Unfortunately, like the Transmission Company and Minister Adelabu that continues to blame insecurity and obsolete transmission infrastructure for the country’s national grid collapse, he offered no concrete solution to arrest the national scandal that keeps the national wattage endlessly at between 5,000 and 7,000.
The fact that the anti-graft boss’s disclosure looks new speaks volumes about the lack of collective effort to deal a blow to not just the issues surrounding national grid collapse but also the stagnant national wattage, which sometimes falls to an abysmal low 3,000 watts.
On this note, we call on the EFCC Chairman to go more than speaking but also naming the culprits. Nigerians need to know these contractors who short-change them and ruin their businesses, interrupt learning in schools and render homes uncomfortable. He should follow the example set by the minister who recently exposed a private company that held on to N32 billion paid into its account in 2003 for the supply of three million prepaid meters in three years.
Although the government eventually recovered N12.7 billion of the amount, the exposure appeared not to have served as a deterrent to those with similar intentions, particularly the rogue contractors in question.
Clearly the contractors are not acting alone. The entire electricity value chain in Nigeria stands indicted in this scandal. It is high time the Federal Government took a frontal position on electricity failure and ensure regular supply in sufficient quantity and quality in Nigeria. Enough of these endless jeremiads of elected and appointed officials.
