24-HOUR ELECTRICITY. A DREAM COME TRUE? YESSSSSS!

It is impossible to develop without power and we do not need government to give us electricity because they cannot. One of the things we need to do at this point is find a way to influence the National Assembly to change the Electricity Act of 2005 that governs the generation, transmission and distribution of power and open up the industry to full deregulation. Government intentions to develop the power sector have been good but designed to fail. China built the -Three Gorges Dam- on the Yangtze river at a cost of $22 billion. It generates 22,500MW.

It is on record that Nigeria spent $16 billion in the same world and in the same century that China built its own dam and we did not achieve 1MW of power generation.

What kind of people are we? Do our leaders love this country at all? Power generation and distribution ought to be deregulated the same way that telecommunications was deregulated------- totally.
States, Communities and private companies should generate and distribute power and be allowed to sell any excess power to other communities.

It is a well known fact that the current incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan whom I seek to replace in 2015 said at a forum in 2013 that over 60 million Nigerians already own generators, spending approximately N2 Trillion Naira annually to purchase and maintain them. What he did not tell us was that the use of generators adds over 80 percent extra cost to all goods produced and services rendered in Nigeria.

On the day I am sworn in as President, I will send a bill for total deregulation/liberalization of the power sector to the National Assembly to amend the Electricity ACT OF 2005 and open the space for full-blown competition.

It is interesting that anyone would think that privatization of the power generating and distribution companies can be the solution when government is still part of the power supply chain. Let me explain.

There are four steps to travel before power gets to the consumer. The generating Company, X, for example generates 10MW of power and sells mandatorily to a government Company called NBET (Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading). NBET then gives the power to TCN, (Transmission Company of Nigeria) which is another government agency.
TCN has old and obsolete equipment. The result of this arrangement is that TCN is only able to give 3MW to the DISCOS (Power Distribution Companies). The DISCOS then report to NBET that they only received 3MW and so X gets paid for only 3MW.
It gets more interesting. NBET, being a government organization, it will sooner or later be plagued by corruption which will make it difficult for X company to get paid on time.
Translation: You will need to bribe to get paid.

At this point, the World Bank then steps in with a PRG (Partial Risk Guarantee), an arrangement that says, if NBET is unable to pay you, come to us and we will pay you a portion of what they owe you. The World Bank has a fixed amount of money in the pot of $400 Million dollars. What then happens when the pot runs out?

If you give me the opportunity, I will uproot the NBET, TCN and the World Bank from the power supply chain and have you deal with X company in your backyard which generates the power directly. He will build his own transmission line and get the power to you in your local government area. All power generation and distribution will be localized.
Let me ask a question. Is there a middleman between you and MTN? If not, then why do we need three middlemen in the power supply chain?

Read article titled: Power supply worsens as five transmission lines fail by Stanley Opara (Punch, May 28, 2014)

The only role for government to play is to prevent exploitation of the consumer which the NERC (Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission) is set up to do, very much like the NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission) does for communication.

One major cure to the power problem lies in gas availability to power the IPPs. Question: Which one is easier and cheaper?---- To generate power at the point where the gas is produced and send the power to the National grid or to pipe the gas hundreds of miles to a power station?

The IOCs I understand, would rather flare the associated gas and pay a penalty to the Federal government than spend so much money to refine it to pipe to a power station at a loss.

WRONG POLICIES CREATE PROBLEMS FOR EVERYONE. GOVERNMENT HAS FOR YEARS IMPOSED AN UNREALISTIC PRICE REGIME ON GAS PRODUCERS, INTERNATIONAL OIL COMPANIES (IOCs) SUCH THAT THEY STOPPED DEVELOPMENT OF NATURAL GAS FOR LOCAL CONSUMPTION.

A simple cure would just be to encourage the IOCs to generate power at source with the associated gas with forward contracts for power purchase. (Paper presented by Dr. Raphael Awoseyin at the Nigerian Oil and Gas conference in Abuja, 2009, titled: Developing gas and power infrastructure franchises and associated gas as solution).

Another major cure to the power problem would entail the government encouraging the proliferation of alternative energy like solar and wind across the country. Germany for example set a target to generate 35% of its energy from solar by 2020. That target was exceeded in early 2014 when solar power began to contribute over 210,000MW to the national grid. This was achieved by introducing a mix of incentives upon which the private sector was able to ride. Wind power already contributes about 30,000MW to help power the German economy.

 Germany with grey skies has a third of the Nigerian land size and a fraction of the sunshine by intensity and length of time in a day and months in a year, yet they are able to achieve these feats which we are better equipped by nature to achieve. One state in Northern Nigeria has the capacity to generate all the solar power Nigeria needs. Government should think policy first before it thinks---Where will we find the money? Money always follows good policies.

Yet another way for us to begin to experience better power supply would be to remove four strong states like Lagos, Rivers, Kano and Ogun from the National grid. We can give them financial resources and give them one year to generate their own power and get off the grid. These four states combined, consume over 80% of power currently generated. The rest of the country will be lifted up immediately.
According to the power allocation formula, Lagos State is supposed to receive 1,000MW from the National grid but Lagos needs 5,000MW to have stable power supply. Kano is supposed to receive 213MW from the National grid but Kano needs 600MW to have stable power supply. This power is supposed to come from an inefficient National Transmission grid and so Kano gets just about 50MW. This is certainly not a way to develop our country.

Panacea to Insecurity in our Nation

INSECURITY:

Where we are:

Boko Haram has seized swathes of territory and kidnapped scores of our children whom they use as human shield. They have hoisted their flags on Nigerian soil and they call our bluff.

Kidnappers have organized themselves into corporations. They have established training schools to train people in the art and many have graduated from their schools. Cults have overtaken our campuses.

Young unemployed graduates have become experts in cyber crime and everyday, they are coming up with new inventions to perfect their acts of criminality.

Armed robbers have moved away from attacking homes. They go in broad daylight to attack Bullion vans and walk into banks with a daring and sophistication unknown 20 years ago.

Baby factories are springing up across the landscape as human trafficking has become one of the quickest ways to become rich.

Militancy has not abated as pipelines are destroyed everyday to steal crude. Foreigners have joined the bandwagon. They come with supertankers to join in the bazaar to steal our crude oil.

Why are we in the Current Situation?

We are where we are for many reasons but I will touch on just a few. Our education system has failed us because it was not  properly implemented. The 6-3-3-4 system was supposed to create artisans and skilled personnel as part of its curriculum. That part was not implemented and so we have a pool of people who are unable to go to higher institutions and are also unable to get jobs at their level without necessary skills. They become feedstock for all the above listed crimes.

Our leadership has a tendency to ignore problems in this country until they become mountains and require surgery. As a matter of fact, ignoring problems appears to be state policy.

Our leadership through the years has embodied the policy of embracing criminals, giving them a pardon and giving them new national assignments. The message to the people is that –it is okay to be a criminal.

Fulani herdsmen and farmers across the country are in constant battle for right of grazing for cattle resulting in incessant killings.

Our Justice administration is too slow. We need to train more judges, build more courts and put a cap on the number of adjournments a case can have to speed up the administration of justice.

Years of operating the patronage system has meant that competent people are not put in charge for us to get best results. We put round pegs in square holes.

The morale of our armed forces has been destroyed by years of corruption, abuse and neglect by their leaders to the extent that a police IG was jailed for stealing money meant for the welfare of the people he should be serving. It does not get worse than that. He may soon obtain his own pardon and run for governor.

PROGNOSIS:

We will continue to linger in this state of insecurity unless we change the old way of doing things.

REMEDY:

Nigeria needs to build a brand new security architecture. We need an integrated Homeland Security that gets information and data from all security agencies and is able to use the information to analyze where new threats are, where they might be coming from next and recommend quick ways to nip the issues in the bud. Electronic surveillance and new technology and research will be carried out by the Homeland Security to keep us safe. The old bureaucracy that has characterized our security system will become a thing of the past. Lazy security reports that only tend to demonize opposition will give way to modern techniques of threat assessment. This is the 21^st century and we must think like we are actually in the 21^st century. The opposition is not the enemy. The Governor is not the state and the President is not the country. All of us, citizens of this nation are equal stakeholders in project Nigeria.

Grassroots approach to CONFLICT resolution is a road worth pursuing. If the Niger Delta militancy was resolved through a grassroots approach, there is no reason why the Boko Haram insurgency cannot be resolved in the same way. There are people whom they trust to negotiate on their behalf. Read article titled. (How to get our girls back by Mama Boko Haram), in the Nation newspaper of June 24^th, 2014.

One more puzzle in solving problems of insecurity is individual responsibility. We must as a nation begin to watch out for and report suspicious behavior and we should be able to do this anonymously.

 I understand that one of the biggest fears people have about reporting crime is their personal safety because they do not trust that the people they are reporting to might not be complicit in the crime. To this end, the creation of an emergency 911 system will be uppermost in my plans to address insecurity in the land.

We are in 2014. We must rise to the security challenges of these times with technology. British society rose to the challenge of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) with technology. In today’s Britain, cameras can tell your story from the moment you arrive in the country until the day you depart.

To solve the immediate problem of our girls in captivity I would grant full, unconditional and unequivocal amnesty to Boko Haram. We need peace to develop this country. That would be my priority. The British government with all its might eventually had to negotiate with the IRA. The Israeli government with all their might also had to negotiate with the PLO. Even the United States, the most powerful nation on earth had to negotiate with Iran in 1981 to set the American hostages free and in recent months, they negotiated with the Taliban to set one American soldier free. My name is Michael Ovienmhada. If you desire change in 2015, then, I am your man----the face of Change. We can build a country which works for everyone and not just for the few. God bless you and may God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.